Symmetric Boundary Value Methods for Second Order Initial and Boundary Value Problems

We introduce symmetric Boundary Value Methods for the solution of second order initial and boundary value problems (in particular Hamiltonian problems). We study the conditioning of the methods and link it to the boundary loci of the roots of the associated characteristic polynomial. Some numerical tests are provided to assess their reliability. Dedicated to the memory of Professor Aldo Cossu     

Long-time dynamics of von Karman semi-flows with non-linear boundary/interior damping

We study von Karman evolution equations with non-linear dissipation and with partially clamped and partially free boundary conditions. Two distinctive mechanisms of dissipation are considered: (i) internal dissipation generated by non-linear operator, and (ii) boundary dissipation generated by shear forces friction acting on a free part of the boundary. The main emphasis is given to the effects of boundary dissipation. Under suitable hypotheses we prove existence of a compact global attractor and finiteness of its fractal dimension. We also show that any solution is stabilized to an equilibrium and estimate the rate of the convergence which, in turn, depends on the behaviour at the origin of the functions describing the dissipation.     

Resolvability properties via independent families

The authors give a consistent affirmative response to a question of Juhász, Soukup and Szentmiklóssy: If GCH fails, there are (many) extraresolvable, not maximally resolvable Tychonoff spaces. They show also in ZFC that for ω<λ?κ, no maximal λ-independent family of λ-partitions of κ is ω-resolvable. In topological language, that theorem translates to this: A dense, ω-resolvable subset of a space of the form (DI(λ)) is λ-resolvable.     

On the pivot structure for the weighing matrix W(12,11)

In the present article we concentrate our study on the growth problem for the weighing matrix W(12,11) and show that the unique W(12,11) has three pivot structures. An improved algorithm for extending a k × k (0,+,-) matrix to a W(n,n-1), if possible, has been developed to simplify the proof. For the implementation of the algorithm special emphasis is given to the notions of data structures and parallel processing.     

Chromatic polynomial, q-binomial counting and colored Jones function

We define a q-chromatic function and q-dichromate on graphs and compare it with existing graph functions. Then we study in more detail the class of general chordal graphs. This is partly motivated by the graph isomorphism problem. Finally we relate the q-chromatic function to the colored Jones function of knots. This leads to a curious expression of the colored Jones function of a knot diagram K as a chromatic operator applied to a power series whose coefficients are linear combinations of long chord diagrams. Chromatic operators are directly related to weight systems by the work of Chmutov, Duzhin, Lando and Noble, Welsh.     

A complete global solution to the pressure gradient equation

We study the domain of existence of a solution to a Riemann problem for the pressure gradient equation in two space dimensions. The Riemann problem is the expansion of a quadrant of gas of constant state into the other three vacuum quadrants. The global existence of a smooth solution was established in Dai and Zhang [Z. Dai, T. Zhang, Existence of a global smooth solution for a degenerate Goursat problem of gas dynamics, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 155 (2000) 277-298] up to the free boundary of vacuum. We prove that the vacuum boundary is the coordinate axes.     

Packing Non-Zero A-Paths In Group-Labelled Graphs

Let G=(V,E) be an oriented graph whose edges are labelled by the elements of a group Γ and let A⊂V. An A-path is a path whose ends are both in A. The weight of a path P in G is the sum of the group values on forward oriented arcs minus the sum of the backward oriented arcs in P. (If Γ is not abelian, we sum the labels in their order along the path.) We are interested in the maximum number of vertex-disjoint A-paths each of non-zero weight. When A = V this problem is equivalent to the maximum matching problem. The general case also includes Mader's S-paths problem. We prove that for any positive integer k, either there are k vertex-disjoint A-paths each of non-zero weight, or there is a set of at most 2k −2 vertices that meets each of the non-zero A-paths. This result is obtained as a consequence of an exact min-max theorem. These results were obtained at a workshop on Structural Graph Theory at the PIMS Institute in Vancouver, Canada. This research was partially conducted during the period the first author served as a Clay Mathematics Institute Long-Term Prize Fellow.     

A nondifferentiable extension of a theorem of Pucci and Serrin and applications

We study the multiplicity of critical points for functionals which are only differentiable along some directions. We extend to this class of functionals the three critical point theorem of Pucci and Serrin and we apply it to a one-parameter family of functionals Jλ, λ∈I⊂R. Under suitable assumptions, we locate an open subinterval of values λ in I for which Jλ possesses at least three critical points. Applications to quasilinear boundary value problems are also given.     

On the maximum cardinality search lower bound for treewidth

The Maximum Cardinality Search (MCS) algorithm visits the vertices of a graph in some order, such that at each step, an unvisited vertex that has the largest number of visited neighbours becomes visited. A maximum cardinality search ordering (MCS-ordering) of a graph is an ordering of the vertices that can be generated by the MCS algorithm. The visited degree of a vertex v in an MCS-ordering is the number of neighbours of v that are before v in the ordering. The visited degree of an MCS-ordering ψ of G is the maximum visited degree over all vertices v in ψ. The maximum visited degree over all MCS-orderings of graph G is called its maximum visited degree. Lucena [A new lower bound for tree-width using maximum cardinality search, SIAM J. Discrete Math. 16 (2003) 345-353] showed that the treewidth of a graph G is at least its maximum visited degree.We show that the maximum visited degree is of size O(logn) for planar graphs, and give examples of planar graphs G with maximum visited degree k with O(k!) vertices, for all k∈N. Given a graph G, it is NP-complete to determine if its maximum visited degree is at least k, for any fixed k?7. Also, this problem does not have a polynomial time approximation algorithm with constant ratio, unless P=NP. Variants of the problem are also shown to be NP-complete.In this paper, we also propose some heuristics for the problem, and report on an experimental analysis of them. Several tiebreakers for the MCS algorithm are proposed and evaluated. We also give heuristics that give upper bounds on the value of the maximum visited degree of a graph, which appear to give results close to optimal on many graphs from real life applications.     

Large Discrepancy In Homogenous Quasi-Arithmetic Progressions

We prove that the class of homogeneous quasi-arithmetic progressions has unbounded discrepancy. That is, we show that given any 2-coloring of the natural numbers and any positive integer D, one can find a real number α≥1 and a set of natural numbers of the form {0, [α], [2α], [3α], . . . , [kα]} so that one color appears at least D times more than the other color. This was already proved by Beck in 1983, but the proof given here is somewhat simpler and gives a better bound on the discrepancy.