Existence and symmetry of minimizers for nonconvex radially symmetric variational problems

We study functionals of the form

Comparison estimates in anisotropic variational problems

A pointwise inequality between the radially decreasing symmetrals of minimizers of (possibly) anisotropic variational problems and the minimizers of suitably symmetrized problems is established. As a consequence, a priori sharp estimates for norms of the relevant minimizers are derived.     

On the Existence and Stability of Solutions for a System of Elliptic Equations

We show, using a dual variational method developed in the paper, the existence of solutions for a system of Dirichlet problems for partial differential equations involving p– and q–Laplacian. The stability of solutions and the existence of positive solutions is considered in the superlinear case.      

Descent method with inexact linesearch for mixed variational inequalities

We propose a descent method with respect to a merit function for the mixed variational inequality involving a general nonlinear mapping and a convex, but not necessarily differentiable function. The method utilizes an inexact linesearch procedure. Its convergence is proved under the additional assumptions of continuity and strong monotonicity of the cost mapping.     

Nonlinear electroelastostatics: a variational framework

Different formulations of the constitutive laws and governing equations for nonlinear electroelastic solids are reviewed and two new variational principles for electroelastostatics are introduced. One is based on use of the electrostatic scalar potential and one on the vector potential, combined with the deformation function. In each case Lagrangian forms of the electric variables are used. Their connections with several formulations of nonlinear electroelasticity in the literature are established and some differences highlighted.      

A nondegeneracy result for a nonlinear elliptic equation

Let Ω be a smooth bounded domain of with N ≥ 5. In this paper we prove, for ɛ > 0 small, the nondegeneracy of the solution of the problem

A sharp form of Nevanlinna's second fundamental theorem

Letf be meromorphic in the plane. We find a sharp upper bound for the error term

A boundedness result for toric log Del Pezzo surfaces

In this paper we give an upper bound for the Picard number of the rational surfaces which resolve minimally the singularities of toric log Del Pezzo surfaces of given index ℓ. This upper bound turns out to be a quadratic polynomial in the variable ℓ. Received: 18 June 2008     

Resource-monotonicity for house allocation problems

We study a simple model of assigning indivisible objects (e.g., houses, jobs, offices, etc.) to agents. Each agent receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not possible. We completely describe all rules satisfying efficiency, independence of irrelevant objects, and resource-monotonicity. The characterized rules assign the objects in a sequence of steps such that at each step there is either a dictator or two agents trade objects from their hierarchically specified endowments.We wish to thank Szilvia Pápai, William Thomson, and two anonymous referees for their useful comments.L. Ehlers gratefully acknowledges financial support from the SSHRC (Canada) and FQRSC (Québec).B. Klauss research is supported by a Ramón y Cajal contract of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología. B. Klaus is also partially supported by Research Grant BEC2002-02130 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and by the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA.     

A variational theory for monotone vector fields

Monotone vector fields were introduced almost 40 years ago as nonlinear extensions of positive definite linear operators, but also as natural extensions of gradients of convex potentials. These vector fields are not always derived from potentials in the classical sense, and as such they are not always amenable to the standard methods of the calculus of variations. We describe here how the selfdual variational calculus, developed recently by the author, provides a variational approach to PDEs and evolution equations driven by maximal monotone operators. To any such vector field T on a reflexive Banach space X, one can associate a convex selfdual Lagrangian L _T on the phase space X × X ^* that can be seen as a “potential” for T, in the sense that the problem of inverting T reduces to minimizing a convex energy functional derived from L _T . This variational approach to maximal monotone operators allows their theory to be analyzed with the full range of methods—computational or not—that are available for variational settings. Standard convex analysis (on phase space) can then be used to establish many old and new results concerned with the identification, superposition, and resolution of such vector fields. Dedicated to Felix Browder on his 80th birthday     

A sharp transition for the two-dimensional Ising percolation

We show that the percolation transition for the two-dimensional Ising model is sharp. Namely, we show that for every reciprocal temperature >0, there exists a critical valueh _c () of external magnetic fieldh such that the following two statements hold.

A generalization of an integral of Ramanujan

This paper considers a generalization of an integral introduced by S. Ramanujan in his third notebook. Ramanujan’s integral is itself a version of the dilogarithm,

A note about the truncation question in percolation of words

Consider an independent site percolation model on ℤ², with parameter p, equipped with all horizontal and vertical connections. In this note it is shown that given for any parameter p ∈ (0, 1), there exists an integer N such that any binary sequence (word) ξ ∈ {0, 1}^ℕ is seen, almost surely, even if all connections whose length is bigger than N are suppressed. *Partially supported by CNPq.     

End-Point Equations and Regularity of Sub-Riemannian Geodesics

For a large class of equiregular sub-Riemannian manifolds, we show that length-minimizing curves have no corner-like singularities. Our first result is the reduction of the problem to the homogeneous, rank-2 case, by means of a nilpotent approximation. We also identify a suitable condition on the tangent Lie algebra implying existence of a horizontal basis of vector fields whose coefficients depend only on the first two coordinates x ₁, x ₂. Then, we cut the corner and lift the new curve to a horizontal one, obtaining a decrease of length as well as a perturbation of the end-point. In order to restore the end-point at a lower cost of length, we introduce a new iterative construction, which represents the main contribution of the paper. We also apply our results to some examples. Received: July 2006, Revision: October 2006, Accepted: November 2006     

A sharp bound for the degree of proper monomial mappings between balls

The authors prove that a proper monomial holomorphic mapping from the two-ball to the N-ball has degree at most 2N-3, and that this result is sharp. The authors first show that certain group-invariant polynomials (related to Lucas polynomials) achieve the bound. To establish the bound the authors introduce a graph-theoretic approach that requires determining the number of sinks in a directed graph associated with the quotient polynomial. The proof also relies on a result of the first author that expresses all proper polynomial holomorphic mappings between balls in terms of tensor products.     

Axiomatizing the Harsanyi solution,the symmetric egalitarian solution and the consistent solution for NTU-games

The validity of the axiomatization of the Harsanyi solution for NTU-games by Hart (1985) is shown to depend on the regularity conditions imposed on games. Following this observation, we propose two related axiomatic characterizations, one of the symmetric egalitarian solution (Kalai and Samet, 1985) and one of the consistent solution (Maschler and Owen, 1992). The three axiomatic results are studied, evaluated and compared in detail.Revised October 2004We thank an anonymous referee and an associate editor for their helpful comments. Geoffroy de Clippel also thanks Professors Sergiu Hart, Jean-François Mertens and Enrico Minelli. Horst Zank thanks the Dutch Science Foundation NWO and the British Council for support under the UK-Netherlands Partnership Programme in Science (PPS 706). The usual disclaimer applies.     

A Cayley theorem for distributive lattices

A Cayley-like representation theorem for distributive lattices is proved. Support of the research of the first author by the Czech Government Research Project MSM 6198959214 is gratefully acknowledged.     

Piecewise linear approximations in nonconvex nonsmooth optimization

We present a bundle type method for minimizing nonconvex nondifferentiable functions of several variables. The algorithm is based on the construction of both a lower and an upper polyhedral approximation of the objective function. In particular, at each iteration, a search direction is computed by solving a quadratic program aiming at maximizing the difference between the lower and the upper model. A proximal approach is used to guarantee convergence to a stationary point under the hypothesis of weak semismoothness. This research has been partially supported by the Italian “Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca”, under PRIN project Ottimizzazione Non Lineare e Applicazioni (20079PLLN7_003).     

A fixed point result in Menger spaces using a real function

The main result of this paper is a fixed point theorem of self-mappings in Menger spaces which satisfy certain inequality. This inequality involves a class of real functions which we call Φ-functions. As a corollary we obtain a result in the corresponding metric spaces. The result is supported by an example. The class of real functions we have used is the conceptual extension of altering distance functions used in metric fixed point theory.      

A Construction of Subsets of the Reals which have a Similarity Decomposition

We construct a subset of the set R of real numbers of cardinality |R| which has a similarity decomposition, and which has an ordertype < that of R. Seymour Ginsburg had posed the question whether there exist sets with another ordertype than that of R which also have a similarity decomposition.