Liouville Systems of Mean Field Equations

In this article, we discuss the recent work of Lin and Zhang on the Liouville system of mean field equations: $$\Delta{u}_i+\sum_{j}a_{ij}\rho_{j} ({\frac{{h_j}e^{u_{j}}}{\int_{M}{h_{j}e^{u_{j}}}}-{\frac{1}{|M|}}})=0\,\, \quad{\rm on}\, M,$$ where M is a compact Riemann surface and |M| is the area, or $$\Delta{u}_i+\sum_{j}a_{ij}\rho_{j} \frac{{h_j}e^{u_{j}}}{\int_{\Omega}{h_{j}e^{u_{j}}}}=0\,\, \quad{\rm in}\, \Omega,$$ $${u_j}=0,\,\, \quad{\rm on}\, \partial\Omega, $$ where ?? is a bounded domain in ${\mathbb{R}^2}$ . Among other things, we completely determine the set of non-critical parameters and derive a degree counting formula for these systems.