On lower semicontinuity in BH and 2-quasiconvexification

It is proved that if , with p > 1, if is bounded in , , and if in then provided is 2-quasiconvex and satisfies some appropriate growth and continuity condition. Characterizations of the 2-quasiconvex envelope when admissible test functions belong to BH^p are provided. Received: 10 October 2001 / Accepted: 8 May 2002 / Published online: 17 December 2002     

Global curvature and self-contact of nonlinearly elastic curves and rods

Many different physical systems, e.g. super-coiled DNA molecules, have been successfully modelled as elastic curves, ribbons or rods. We will describe all such systems as framed curves, and will consider problems in which a three dimensional framed curve has an associated energy that is to be minimized subject to the constraint of there being no self-intersection. For closed curves the knot type may therefore be specified a priori. Depending on the precise form of the energy and imposed boundary conditions, local minima of both open and closed framed curves often appear to involve regions of self-contact, that is, regions in which points that are distant along the curve are close in space. While this phenomenon of self-contact is familiar through every day experience with string, rope and wire, the idea is surprisingly difficult to define in a way that is simultaneously physically reasonable, mathematically precise, and analytically tractable. Here we use the notion of global radius of curvature of a space curve in a new formulation of the self-contact constraint, and exploit our formulation to derive existence results for minimizers, in the presence of self-contact, of a range of elastic energies that define various framed curve models. As a special case we establish the existence of ideal shapes of knots. Received: 19 January 2001 / Accepted: 23 January 2001 / Published online: 23 April 2001     

Invariant Cocycles Have Abelian Ranges

 Let R be a discrete nonsingular equivalence relation on a standard probability space , and let V be an ergodic strongly asymptotically central automorphism of R. We prove that every V-invariant cocycle with values in a Polish group G takes values in an abelian subgroup of G. The hypotheses of this result are satisfied, for example, if A is a finite set, a closed, shift-invariant subset, V is the shift, μ a shift-invariant and ergodic probability measure on X, the two-sided tail-equivalence relation on X, a shift-invariant subrelation which is μ-nonsingular, and a shift-invariant cocycle. (Received 15 September 2001)     

Liapunov Functionals for Smoluchowski’s Coagulation Equation and Convergence to Self-Similarity

An alternative proof of the convergence to self-similar profiles for solutions to the Smoluchowski coagulation equation with constant coagulation kernel is provided. In contrast to the previous approaches which rely on the Laplace transform, a dynamical systems approach is used on the equation written in self-similar variables, for which several Liapunov functionals are identified.     

Characterization of Finite Groups With Some <Emphasis Type="Italic">S</Emphasis>-quasinormal Subgroups

A subgroup of a finite group G is said to be S-quasinormal in G if it permutes with every Sylow subgroup of G. In this paper we give a characterization of a finite group G under the assumption that every subgroup of the generalized Fitting subgroup of prime order is S-quasinormal in G.     

Twodimensional anisotropic variational problems

We consider local minimizers a domain in , of the variational integral with integrand f of upper (lower) growth rate q (s). We show using a lemma due to Frehse and Seregin that u has H?lder continuous first derivatives provided that . Received: 2 October 2001 / Accepted: 25 October 2001 / Published online: 28 February 2002     

Finding Einstein solvmanifolds by a variational method

We use a variational approach to prove that any nilpotent Lie algebra having a codimension-one abelian ideal, and anyone of dimension , admits a rank-one solvable extension which can be endowed with an Einstein left-invariant riemannian metric. A curve of -dimensional Einstein solvmanifolds is also given. Received: 29 May 2001; in final form: 4 October 2001 / Published online: 4 April 2002     

Partial regularity in non-linear elasticity

We prove partial regularity of minimizers of some polyconvex functionals. In particular our results include models such as ∫_Ω a(x,u)(|Du|²+| det Du|²), where a is a bounded H?lder continuous function, such that a(x,u)≥c for some positive constant c. Received: 2 January 2001 / Revised version: 30 August 2001     

A bound on the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity for curves

Recall that a projective curve in with ideal sheaf is said to be n-regular if for every integer and that in this case, it is cut out scheme-theoretically by equations of degree at most n. The purpose here is to show that an irreducible, reduced, projective curve of degree d and large arithmetic genus satisfies a smaller regularity bound than the optimal one . For example, if then a curve is -regular unless it is embedded by a complete linear system of degree . Received: 29 May 2000 / Published online: 24 September 2001