A note on localized directional weak lower semi-continuity

Abstract

In minimization problems for functionals f : M → R, M ⊆ E a subset of some infinite dimensional Banach space E, we typically have to rely on weak (sequential) lower semi-continuity of f on the whole space E even if M is a proper subset of E. The main reason for this lack of 'localized' weak lower semi-continuity seems to be that it is not known how to get and/or to characterize weak sequential lower semi-continuity on a subset M without knowing it on the whole space. As a first step to overcome this difficulty we propose the concept of 'localized directional weak sequential lower semi-continuity' and offer a way to implement it, namely in terms of conditions on the Gateaux derivative f′ of f (weak K-monotonicity). This allows to formulate a criterium and new sufficient conditions for the existence of a minimizer.