Dirichlet duality and the nonlinear Dirichlet problem

We study the Dirichlet problem for fully nonlinear, degenerate elliptic equations of the form F (Hess u) = 0 on a smoothly bounded domain Ω ? ?ⁿ. In our approach the equation is replaced by a subset F ? Sym²(?ⁿ) of the symmetric n × n matrices with ?F ? { F = 0}. We establish the existence and uniqueness of continuous solutions under an explicit geometric “F‐convexity” assumption on the boundary ?Ω. We also study the topological structure of F‐convex domains and prove a theorem of Andreotti‐Frankel type. Two key ingredients in the analysis are the use of “subaffine functions” and “Dirichlet duality.” Associated to F is a Dirichlet dual set F? that gives a dual Dirichlet problem. This pairing is a true duality in that the dual of F? is F, and in the analysis the roles of F and F? are interchangeable. The duality also clarifies many features of the problem including the appropriate conditions on the boundary. Many interesting examples are covered by these results including: all branches of the homogeneous Monge‐Ampère equation over ?, ?, and ?; equations appearing naturally in calibrated geometry, Lagrangian geometry, and p‐convex Riemannian geometry; and all branches of the special Lagrangian potential equation. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The colored Hadwiger transversal theorem in ℝ<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">d</Emphasis></Superscript>

Hadwiger’s transversal theorem gives necessary and suffcient conditions for a family of convex sets in the plane to have a line transversal. A higher dimensional version was obtained by Goodman, Pollack and Wenger, and recently a colorful version appeared due to Arocha, Bracho and Montejano. We show that it is possible to combine both results to obtain a colored version of Hadwiger's theorem in higher dimensions. The proofs differ from the previous ones and use a variant of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem. To be precise, we prove the following. Let F be a family of convex sets in ? ^d in bijection with a set P of points in ? ^d?1. Assume that there is a coloring of F with suffciently many colors such that any colorful Radon partition of points in P corresponds to a colorful Radon partition of sets in F. Then some monochromatic subfamily of F has a hyperplane transversal.     

Vanishing viscosity limit of the Navier‐Stokes equations to the euler equations for compressible fluid flow

We establish the vanishing viscosity limit of the Navier‐Stokes equations to the isentropic Euler equations for one‐dimensional compressible fluid flow. For the Navier‐Stokes equations, there exist no natural invariant regions for the equations with the real physical viscosity term so that the uniform sup‐norm of solutions with respect to the physical viscosity coefficient may not be directly controllable. Furthermore, convex entropy‐entropy flux pairs may not produce signed entropy dissipation measures. To overcome these difficulties, we first develop uniform energy‐type estimates with respect to the viscosity coefficient for solutions of the Navier‐Stokes equations and establish the existence of measure‐valued solutions of the isentropic Euler equations generated by the Navier‐Stokes equations. Based on the uniform energy‐type estimates and the features of the isentropic Euler equations, we establish that the entropy dissipation measures of the solutions of the Navier‐Stokes equations for weak entropy‐entropy flux pairs, generated by compactly supported C² test functions, are confined in a compact set in H^?1, which leads to the existence of measure‐valued solutions that are confined by the Tartar‐Murat commutator relation. A careful characterization of the unbounded support of the measure‐valued solution confined by the commutator relation yields the reduction of the measurevalued solution to a Dirac mass, which leads to the convergence of solutions of the Navier‐Stokes equations to a finite‐energy entropy solution of the isentropic Euler equations with finite‐energy initial data, relative to the different end‐states at infinity. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The smoothness of the free boundary for a class of vector-valued problems

We consider a minimizer u: Rⁿ Ω→ⁿ of Dirichlet's integral under the additional side condition In(.) ? M for a smooth domain M?R^N. Imposing certain geometric conditions on M we show that the coincidence set {x?Ω: u(x) ? ?M) is of locally finite perimeter in Ω. Moreover, we formulate a condition implying the regularity of the free boundary near a given point.     

On the isoperimetric problem in the Heisenberg group ℍ<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis></Superscript>

It has been recently conjectured that, in the context of the Heisenberg group ℍⁿ endowed with its Carnot–Carathéodory metric and Haar measure, the isoperimetric sets (i.e., minimizers of the ℍ-perimeter among sets of constant Haar measure) could coincide with the solutions to a “restricted” isoperimetric problem within the class of sets having finite perimeter, smooth boundary, and cylindrical symmetry. In this paper, we derive new properties of these restricted isoperimetric sets, which we call Heisenberg bubbles. In particular, we show that their boundary has constant mean ℍ-curvature and, quite surprisingly, that it is foliated by the family of minimal geodesics connecting two special points. In view of a possible strategy for proving that Heisenberg bubbles are actually isoperimetric among the whole class of measurable subsets of ℍⁿ, we turn our attention to the relationship between volume, perimeter, and ε-enlargements. In particular, we prove a Brunn–Minkowski inequality with topological exponent as well as the fact that the ℍ-perimeter of a bounded, open set F⊂ℍⁿ of class C² can be computed via a generalized Minkowski content, defined by means of any bounded set whose horizontal projection is the 2n-dimensional unit disc. Some consequences of these properties are discussed. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 28A75, 22E25, 49Q20     

Some remarks on planar Boussinesq equations

The main purpose of this paper is to prove the well-posedness of the two-dimensional Boussinesq equations when the initial vorticity ω 0 ∈L1 (R 2 ) (or the finite Radon measure space). Using the stream function form of the equations and the Schauder fixed-point theorem to get the new proof of these results, we get that when the initial vorticity is smooth, there exists a unique classical solutions for the Cauchy problem of the two dimensional Boussinesq equations.     

Submanifolds with totally umbilical Gauss image

The submanifolds whose Gauss images are totally umbilical submanifolds of the Grassmann manifold are under consideration. The main result is the following classification theorem: if the Gauss image of a submanifold F in a Euclidean space is totally umbilical then either the Gauss image is totally geodesic, or F is the surface in E ⁴ of the special structure. Submanifolds in a Euclidean space with totally geodesic Gauss image were classified earlier.     

The implicit function theorem in a non-Archimedean setting

In this paper, the inverse function theorem and the implicit function theorem in a non-Archimedean setting will be discussed. We denote by N any non-Archimedean field extension of the real numbers that is real closed and Cauchy complete in the topology induced by the order; and we study the properties of locally uniformly differentiable functions from Nⁿ to N^m. Then we use that concept of local uniform differentiability to formulate and prove the inverse function theorem for functions from Nⁿ to Nⁿ and the implicit function theorem for functions from Nⁿ to N^m with m<n.     

Multiphase double‐porosity homogenization for perimeter functionals

In this paper, we study a homogenization problem for perimeter energies in highly contrasted media; the analysis of the previous paper is carried out by removing the hypothesis that the perforated medium Rⁿ ? E is composed of disjoint compact components. Assuming E to be the union of a finite number N of connected components E¹, … ,E^N, the Γ‐limit F is a multiphase energy with a ‘decoupled’ surface part, obtained by homogenization from the surface tensions in each E ^j, a trivial bulk term obtained as a weak limit, and a further interacting term between the phases, involving an asymptotic formula for a family minimum problems on invading an asymptotic formula for a family of minimum problems on invading domains with prescribed boundary conditions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Connected components of sets of finite perimeter and applications to image processing

This paper contains a systematic analysis of a natural measure theoretic notion of connectedness for sets of finite perimeter in ℝ ^N , introduced by H. Federer in the more general framework of the theory of currents. We provide a new and simpler proof of the existence and uniqueness of the decomposition into the so-called M-connected components. Moreover, we study carefully the structure of the essential boundary of these components and give in particular a reconstruction formula of a set of finite perimeter from the family of the boundaries of its components. In the two dimensional case we show that this notion of connectedness is comparable with the topological one, modulo the choice of a suitable representative in the equivalence class. Our strong motivation for this study is a mathematical justification of all those operations in image processing that involve connectedness and boundaries. As an application, we use this weak notion of connectedness to provide a rigorous mathematical basis to a large class of denoising filters acting on connected components of level sets. We introduce a natural domain for these filters, the space WBV(Ω) of functions of weakly bounded variation in Ω, and show that these filters are also well behaved in the classical Sobolev and BV spaces. Received July 27, 1999 / final version received June 8, 2000?Published online November 8, 2000     

Smooth interval maps have symbolic extensions

We prove that if X denotes the interval or the circle then every transformation T:X→X of class C ^r , where r>1 is not necessarily an integer, admits a symbolic extension, i.e., every such transformation is a topological factor of a subshift over a finite alphabet. This is done using the theory of entropy structure. For such transformations we control the entropy structure by providing an upper bound, in terms of Lyapunov exponents, of local entropy in the sense of Newhouse of an ergodic measure ν near an invariant measure μ (the antarctic theorem). This bound allows us to estimate the so-called symbolic extension entropy function on invariant measures (the main theorem), and as a consequence, to estimate the topological symbolic extension entropy; i.e., a number such that there exists a symbolic extension with topological entropy arbitrarily close to that number. This last estimate coincides, in dimension 1, with a conjecture stated by Downarowicz and Newhouse [13, Conjecture 1.2]. The passage from the antarctic theorem to the main theorem is applicable to any topological dynamical system, not only to smooth interval or circle maps.     

Semilinear parabolic problem with nonstandard boundary conditions: Error estimates

We study a semilinear parabolic partial differential equation of second order in a bounded domain Ω ? ?^N, with nonstandard boundary conditions (BCs) on a part Γ_non of the boundary ?Ω. Here, neither the solution nor the flux are prescribed pointwise. Instead, the total flux through Γ_non is given, and the solution along Γ_non has to follow a prescribed shape function, apart from an additive (unknown) space‐constant α(t). We prove the well‐posedness of the problem, provide a numerical method for the recovery of the unknown boundary data, and establish the error estimates. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 19: 167–191, 2003     

Regularity for Shape Optimizers: The Degenerate Case

We consider minimizers of (1) where F is a function nondecreasing in each parameter, and λ_k(Ω) is the k^th Dirichlet eigenvalue of ω. This includes, in particular, functions F that depend on just some of the first N eigenvalues, such as the often-studied F=λ_N. The existence of a minimizer, which is also a bounded set of finite perimeter, was shown recently. Here we show that the reduced boundary of the minimizers Ω is made up of smooth graphs and examine the difficulties in classifying the singular points. Our approach is based on an approximation (“vanishing viscosity”) argument, which—counterintuitively—allows us to recover an Euler-Lagrange equation for the minimizers that is not otherwise available. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Existence of a non‐reflexive embedding with birational Gauss map for a projective variety

We study the relationship between the generic smoothness of the Gauss map and the reflexivity (with respect to the projective dual) for a projective variety defined over an algebraically closed field. The problem we discuss here is whether it is possible for a projective variety X in ℙ^N to re‐embed into some projective space ℙ^M so as to be non‐reflexive with generically smooth Gauss map. Our result is that the answer is affirmative under the assumption that X has dimension at least 3 and the differential of the Gauss map of X in ℙ^N is identically zero; hence the projective varietyX re‐embedded in ℙ^M yields a negative answer to Kleiman–Piene's question: Does the generic smoothness of the Gauss map imply reflexivity for a projective variety? A Fermat hypersurface in ℙ^N with suitable degree in positive characteristic is known to satisfy the assumption above. We give some new, other examples of X in ℙ^N satisfying the assumption. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A kinetic approach to comparison properties for degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic equations with boundary conditions

We study the comparison principle for degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic equations with initial and nonhomogeneous boundary conditions. We prove a comparison theorem for any entropy sub- and supersolution. The L¹ contractivity and, therefore, uniqueness of entropy solutions has been obtained so far by some authors, but it seems that any comparison theorem is not proven. The method used there is the doubling variable technique due to Kru?kov. Our method is based upon the kinetic formulation and the kinetic techniques. By developing the kinetic techniques for degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic equations with boundary conditions, we can obtain a comparison property which obviously extends the L¹ contractive property.     

A MANN ITERATIVE REGULARIZATION METHOD FOR ELLIPTIC CAUCHY PROBLEMS

We investigate the Cauchy problem for linear elliptic operators with C ^∞–coefficients at a regular set Ω ? R ², which is a classical example of an ill-posed problem. The Cauchy data are given at the manifold Γ ? ?Ω and our goal is to reconstruct the trace of the H ¹(Ω) solution of an elliptic equation at ?Ω/Γ. The method proposed here composes the segmenting Mann iteration with a fixed point equation associated with the elliptic Cauchy problem. Our algorithm generalizes the iterative method developed by Maz'ya et al., who proposed a method based on solving successive well-posed mixed boundary value problems. We analyze the regularizing and convergence properties both theoretically and numerically.

     

Singular solutions of the Poisson equation at edges of three‐dimensional domains and their treatment with a predictor–corrector finite element method

Solutions of boundary value problems in three‐dimensional domains with edges may exhibit singularities which are known to influence both the accuracy of the finite element solutions and the rate of convergence in the error estimates. This paper considers boundary value problems for the Poisson equation on typical domains Ω ? ?³ with edge singularities and presents, on the one hand, explicit computational formulas for the flux intensity functions. On the other hand, it proposes and analyzes a nonconforming finite element method on regular meshes for the efficient treatment of the singularities. The novelty of the present method is the use of the explicit formulas for the flux intensity functions in defining a postprocessing procedure in the finite element approximation of the solution. A priori error estimates in H¹(Ω) show that the present algorithm exhibits the same rate of convergence as it is known for problems with regular solutions.     

On the A-obstacle problem and the Hausdorff measure of its free boundary

In this paper, we prove existence and uniqueness of an entropy solution to the A-obstacle problem, for L ¹-data. We also extend the Lewy?CStampacchia inequalities to the general framework of L ¹-data and show convergence and stability results. We then prove that the free boundary has finite (N ? 1)-Hausdorff measure, which completes previous works on this subject by Caffarelli for the Laplace operator and by Lee and Shahgholian for the p-Laplace operator when p?>?2.     

A least-squares finite element method based on the Helmholtz decomposition for hyperbolic balance laws

In this paper, a least-squares finite element method for scalar nonlinear hyperbolic balance laws is proposed and studied. The approach is based on a formulation that utilizes an appropriate Helmholtz decomposition of the flux vector and is related to the standard notion of a weak solution. This relationship, together with a corresponding connection to negative-norm least-squares, is described in detail. As a consequence, an important numerical conservation theorem is obtained, similar to the famous Lax–Wendroff theorem. The numerical conservation properties of the method in this paper do not fall precisely in the framework introduced by Lax and Wendroff, but they are similar in spirit as they guarantee that when L² convergence holds, the resulting approximations approach a weak solution to the hyperbolic problem. The least-squares functional is continuous and coercive in an H⁻¹-type norm, but not L²-coercive. Nevertheless, the L² convergence properties of the method are discussed. Convergence can be obtained either by an explicit regularization of the functional, that provides control of the L² norm, or by properly choosing the finite element spaces, providing implicit control of the L² norm. Numerical results for the inviscid Burgers equation with discontinuous source terms are shown, demonstrating the L² convergence of the obtained approximations to the physically admissible solution. The numerical method utilizes a least-squares functional, minimized on finite element spaces, and a Gauss–Newton technique with nested iteration. We believe that the linear systems encountered with this formulation are amenable to multigrid techniques and combining the method with adaptive mesh refinement would make this approach an efficient tool for solving balance laws (this is the focus of a future study).