On density of compactly supported smooth functions in fractional Sobolev spaces

Abstract

We describe some sufficient conditions, under which smooth and compactly supported functions are or are not dense in the fractional Sobolev space $W^{s,p}(\Omega)$ for an open, bounded set $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{d}$. The density property is closely related to the lower and upper Assouad codimension of the boundary of $\Omega$. We also describe explicitly the closure of $C_{c}^{\infty}(\Omega)$ in $W^{s,p}(\Omega)$ under some mild assumptions about the geometry of $\Omega$. Finally, we prove a variant of a fractional order Hardy inequality.