In mathematics, the Aubin–Lions lemma (or theorem) is the result in the theory of Sobolev spaces of Banach space-valued functions, which provides a compactness criterion that is useful in the study of nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equations. Typically, to prove the existence of solutions one first constructs approximate solutions (for example, by a Galerkin method or by mollification of the equation), then uses the compactness lemma to show that there is a convergent subsequence of approximate solutions whose limit is a solution.
The result is named after the French mathematicians Jean-Pierre Aubin and Jacques-Louis Lions. In the original proof by Aubin,[1] the spaces X0 and X1 in the statement of the lemma were assumed to be reflexive, but this assumption was removed by Simon,[2] so the result is also referred to as the Aubin–Lions–Simon lemma.[3]
Let X0, X and X1 be three Banach spaces with X0 ⊆ X ⊆ X1. Suppose that X0 is compactly embedded in X and that X is continuously embedded in X1. For 1 ≤ p , q ≤ ∞ {\displaystyle 1\leq p,q\leq \infty } , let
(i) If p < ∞ {\displaystyle p<\infty } then the embedding of W into L p ( [ 0 , T ] ; X ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,T];X)} is compact.
(ii) If p = ∞ {\displaystyle p=\infty } and q > 1 {\displaystyle q>1} then the embedding of W into C ( [ 0 , T ] ; X ) {\displaystyle C([0,T];X)} is compact.