Obtuse cones in Hilbert spaces and applications to partial differential equations

AbstractThe positive cone K in a partially ordered Hilbert space is said to be obtuse with respect to the inner product if the dual cone K∗ ⊂ K. Obtuseness of cones with respect to non-symmetric bilinear forms is also defined and characterized. These results are applied to the generalized Sobolev space associated with an elliptic boundary value problem, in particular to the question of determining the non-negativity of the Green's function. A notion of strict obtuseness is defined, characterized and applied to the question of strict positivity of the Green's function. Applications to positivity preserving semi-groups are also given