Analysis Seminar

Spring 2012

Coordinator: Nader Masmoudi

The analysis seminar covers a wide range of topics in analysis with particular emphasis on partial differential equations. Many of the speakers are Courant Institute visitors and postdocs. A seminar talk may cover original research or report on an interesting paper. The seminar meets on Thursdays at 11:00 am in room 1302 of Warren Weaver Hall at 251 Mercer Street, New York. Talks generally last an hour. A few special analysis seminars may be held at other times and locations.

The most reliable and inclusive list of weekly seminars and events is to be found in the weekly bulletin that is posted on a day-by-day basis on the CIMS home page.

January  19
Tianling Jin (Rutgers)
A fractional Yamabe flow and some applications.

In this talk, we introduce a fractional Yamabe flow involving nonlocal conformally invariant operators on the conformal infinity of asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds, and show that on the conformal spheres $(S^n, [g_{S^n}])$, it converges to the standard sphere up to a Mobius diffeomorphism. This result allows us to obtain extinction profiles of solutions of some fractional porous medium equations. In the end, we use this fractional fast diffusion equation, together with its extinction profile and some estimates of its extinction time, to improve a Sobolev inequality via a quantitative estimate of the remainder term. This is joint work with Jingang Xiong.

January 25  ** Special Wednesday Seminar**
Frederic Bernicot
Differential inclusions describing unilateral constraints

We will present existing and new results about differential inclusions, involving proximal normal cone. This tool aims to encode unilateral constraints in some differential equations of order 1 and 2. Using some convex analysis, we presnet results of global existence for solutions of such equations and we will discuss about the uniqueness of them

January 26
Lazhar Tayeb (University of Tunis)
Approximation by diffusion and homogenization for Fermi-Dirac-Poisson Statistics

We study the diffusion approximation of a  Boltzmann-Poisson system dealing with Fermi-Dirac statistics  in the presence of an extra external  oscillating electrostatic potential. The relative entropy disspation and the two-scale Young  measures are used to prove a two-scale strong convergence leading to a nonlinear Drift-diffusion with a effective potential and coupled to Poisson equation.

February 2
Hideyuki Miura
On fundamental solutions for fractional diffusion equations with divergence free drift

We are concerned with fractional diffusion equations in the presence of a divergence free drift term. By using the Nash approach, we show the existence of fundamental solutions, together with the continuity estimates, under weak regularity assumptions on the drift. Our results give the alternative proof of Caffarelli-Vasseur's theorem on the regularity for the critical 2D dissipative quasi-geostrophic equations. This is a joint work with Yasunori Maekawa.

February 9
Alessio Figalli, UT Austin ** this talk is at 10am**
Di Perna-Lions theory, with application to semiclassical limits for the Schrodinger equation

At the beginning of the '90, DiPerna and Lions studied in detail the connection between transport equations and ordinary differential equations. In particular, by proving an existence and uniqueness result at the level of the transport equation, they obtained (roughly speaking)
existence and uniqueness of solutions for ODEs with Sobolev vector-fields for a.e. initial condition. Ten years later, Ambrosio has been able to extend such a result to BV vector fields. In some recent works we have investigated this theory in a more general setting, which allows us to show the semiclassical convergence of the quantum dynamics to the Liouville dynamics for the linear Schrodinger equations, under very weak regularity assumptions on the potential. In analogy to the classical DiPerna-Lions' theory, the price to pay for allowing singular potential is that the convergence result holds true only for "a.e. initial data", where "a.e." is with respect to a suitable family of reference measures in the space of the initial data. The aim of this talk is to give an overview of these results.

Mahir Hadzic (MIT)
The Classical Stefan problem and the vanishing surface tension limit

We develop a new unified framework for the treatment of well-posedness for the Stefan problem with and without surface tension.  We provide new estimates for the regularity of the moving surface in the absence of surface tension. We conclude by proving that solutions of the Stefan problem with positive surface tension converge to solutions of the
Stefan problem without surface tension. This is joint work with S. Shkoller.

February 16
Paul Feehan (Rutgers)
Degenrate Obstacle Problems

Degenerate  elliptic and parabolic obstacle problems arise in mathematical finance when valuing American-style options on an underlying asset modeled by a degenerate diffusion process. We will describe our work on existence, uniqueness, and regularity of solutions to stationary and evolutionary variational inequalities and associated obstacle problems when the underlying asset is modeled by a degenerate diffusion process. This is joint work with Panagiota Daskalopoulos (Department of Mathematics, Columbia University) and Camelia Pop (Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University).

February 23
Erwan Faou

March 1
Frederic Rousset, Rennes
Uniform regularity and inviscid limit for free surface Navier-Stokes

March 8
Masashi Aiki

March 15
Cyrill Muratov

April 12
David Gerard-Varet, Paris 7

April 19
Dehua Wang (University of Pittsburgh)

April 26
Alberto Bressan (Penn State)

May 3
Anne-Sophie de Suzzoni (CERGY)
On statistical description of the flow of dispersive PDEs

May 10
Ben Schweitzer, University of Dortmund
Homogenization of Maxwell equations in complex geometries: on the counter-intuitive behavior of meta materials

        

Optically active meta-materials can nowadays be constructed as  physical objects. They can have astonishing properties or lead to  striking effects, the key-words are negative refraction, perfect imaging, and cloaking. I will present the effect of a negative  magnetic permeability of the effective material and perfect light  transmission through small holes in a metallic structure.

Mathematically, we analyze the time-harmonic Maxwell equations in a  heterogeneous medium, the coefficients of the equation can oscillate  on a small spatial scale and the oscillations of the values can be  very large. The heterogeneity of the optical medium is prescribed by  specifying the permittivity, which varies on a small length scale \eta. The electric and magnetic fields are determined by the time-harmonic Maxwell system. We analyze the weak limits of the  electric and magnetic fields as \eta tends to zero, obtaining an "effective equation" that characterizes the limits. The coefficients  of the effective equation describe the behavior of the metamaterial.
This is joint work with G. Bouchitte and with A. Lamacz.

Fall 2011

September 15
Camil Muscalu, Cornell University
Triangular Fourier series and physical reality

September 22
Zaher Hani, CIMS
Long time strong instability and unbounded orbits for some nonlinear Schrodinger equations

Tuesday, September 27, 10:00 a.m. in room 1314
Xavier Cabre, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Minimal surfaces and entire solutions of the Allen-Cahn equation

September 29
Benoit Pausader, CIMS
The energy critical Schrodinger equation on the 3D torus

October 6
George Hagstrom, CIMS
A Krein-Moser Theorem for Vlasov-Poisson

October 13
Federica Sani, CIMS and Univ of Milan
Sharp Adams-type inequalities in R^N

October 20
Jacob Bedrossian, CIMS
Global existence and finite time blow-up for critical Patlak-Keller-Segel models with spatially inhomogeneous diffusion

Special Analysis Seminar Tuesday October 25
2 pm room 1302 WWH Nassif Ghoussoub
University of British Columbia Selfdual polar decomposition

October 27
Vincent Duchene, Columbia University
Asymptotic models for internal waves in the long wave regime, and the dead water phenomenon

November 3
Alex Ionescu, Princeton
On the local extension of Killing vector-fields in Ricci flat manifolds

I will discuss some recent work, joint with S. Klainerman, on the problem of extension of Killing vector-fields in manifolds that satisfy the Einstein vacuum equations. This problem is motivated by the black hole rigidity conjecture, concerning the uniqueness of the Kerr family among regular, stationary black hole solutions of the Einstein vacuum equations.

November 10
Comgming Li, University of Boulder
A degree theory approach for the shooting method

November 17
Christophe Lacave, Universite Paris-Diderot (Paris 7)
Well-posedness for Euler 2D in non-smooth domains

The well-posedness of the Euler system has been of course the matter of many works, but a common point in all the previous studies is that the boundary is at least $C^{1,1}$. In a first part, we will establish the existence of global weak solutions of the 2D incompressible Euler equations for a large class of non-smooth open sets. These open sets are the complements (in a simply connected domain) of a finite number of connected compact sets with positive capacity. Existence of weak solutions with $L^p$ vorticity is deduced from an approximation argument, that relates to the so-called $\gamma$-convergence of domains. In a second part, we will prove the uniqueness if the open set is the interior or the exterior of a simply connected domain, where the boundary has a finite number of corners. Although the velocity blows up near these corners, we will get a similar theorem to the Yudovich's result, in the case of an initial vorticity with definite sign, bounded and compactly supported. The key point for the uniqueness part is to prove by a Liapounov energy that the vorticity never meets the boundary. The existence part is a work in collaboration with David Gerard-Varet.

SPECIAL ANALYSIS SEMINAR, November 22, 11 a.m., room 1314
Shen Zhongwei, University of Kentucky
The Periodic Homogenization of Green's and Neumann Functions

December 1st
Oana Pocovnicu (Imperial College, London)
Effective dynamics of a non-linear wave equation

We consider the non-linear wave equation on the real line iu_t-|D|u=|u|^2u. Its resonant dynamics is given by the Szego equation, which is a completely integrable non-dispersive non-linear equation. We show that the solution of the wave equation can be approximated by that of the resonant dynamics for a long time. The proof uses the renormalization group method introduced by Chen, Goldenfeld, and Oono in the context of theoretical physics. As a consequence, we obtain growth of high Sobolev norms of certain solutions of the non-linear wave equation, since this phenomenon was already exhibited for the Szego equation.

December 8
Aynur Bulut (IAS)
The defocusing Cubic Nonlinear Wave Equation in the Energy Super-critical Regime

In this talk, we will discuss a series of recent works on the global well-posedness and scattering conjecture for the defocusing cubic nonlinear wave equation in the energy super-critical regime, that is dimensions five and higher.  More precisely, using a concentration compactness approach we show that if a solution remains bounded in the critical Sobolev space throughout its maximal interval of existence then it is global and scatters.

December 15
Daniela Tonon (ICERM and SISSA)
Regularity of viscosity solutions for Hamilton-Jacobi equations.

We present two results on the regularity of viscosity solutions of  Hamilton-Jacobi equations obtained in collaboration with Professor Stefano Bianchini. When the Hamiltonian is strictly convex viscosity solutions are semiconcave, hence their gradient is BV. First we prove the SBV regularity of the gradient of a viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation  u_t+ H(t,x,D_x u)=0 in an open set of R^(n+1), under the hypothesis of uniform convexity of the Hamiltonian H in the last variable. Secondly we remove the uniform convexity hypothesis on the Hamiltonian, considering a viscosity solution u of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation  u_t+ H(D_x u)=0  in an open set of R^(n+1) where H is smooth and convex. In this case the viscosity solution is only locally Lipschitz. However when the vector field d(t,x):=H_p(D_xu(t,x)), here H_p is the gradient of H, is BV for all t in [0,T] and suitable hypotheses on the Lagrangian L hold, the divergence of  d(t, ) can have Cantor part only for a countable number of t's in [0,T]. These results extend a result of Bianchini, De Lellis and Robyr for a uniformly convex Hamiltonian  which depends only on the spatial gradient of the solution.



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