A defect energy Jβ, which measures jump discontinuities of a unit length gradient field, is studied. The number β indicates the power of the jumps of the gradient fields that appear in the density of Jβ. It is shown that Jβ for β = 3 is lower semicontinuous (on the space of unit gradient fields belonging to BV) in L1-convergence of gradient fields. A similar result holds for the modified energy , which measures only a particular type of defect. The result turns out to be very subtle, since with β > 3 is not lower semicontinuous, as is shown in this paper. The key idea behind semicontinuity is a duality representation for J3 and . The duality representation is also important for obtaining a lower bound by using J3+ for the relaxation limit of the Ginzburg–Landau type energy for gradient fields. The lower bound obtained here agrees with the conjectured value of the relaxation limit.

We prove classical averaging lemmas in the L2 framework with the help of the Fourier transform in variables x and v, but not t. This method is then used to study discretized problems arising out of the numerical analysis of kinetic equations.

Local models are given for the singularities that can appear on the trajectories ofgeneral motions of the plane with more than two degrees of freedom. Versal unfoldings of these model singularities give rise to computer-generated pictures describing the family of trajectories arising from small deformations of the tracing point, and determine the local structure of the bifurcation curves.

We study the variation of the zeros of the Hermite function Hλ(t) with respect to the positive real variable λ. We show that, for each non-negative integer n, Hλ(t) has exactly n + 1 real zeros when n < λ ≤ n + 1, and that each zero increases from – ∞ to ∞ as λ increases. We establish a formula for the derivative of a zero with respect to the parameter λ; this derivative is a completely monotonic function of λ. By-products include some results on the regular sign behaviour of differences of zeros of Hermite polynomials as well as a proof of some inequalities, related to work of W. K. Hayman and E. L. Ortiz for the largest zero of Hλ(t). Similar results on zeros of certain confluent hypergeometric functions are given too. These specialize to results on the first, second, etc., positive zeros of Hermite polynomials.

This paper is concerned with integral domains R, for which the factor group SL2(R)/U2(R) has a non-trivial, free quotient, where U2(R) is the subgroup of GL2(R) generated by the unipotent matrices. Recently, Krstić and McCool have proved that SL2(P[x])/U2(P[x]) has a free quotient of infinite rank, where P is a domain which is not a field. This extends earlier results of Grunewald, Mennicke and Vaserstein.

Any ring of the type P[x] has Krull dimension at least 2. The purpose of this paper is to show that result of Krstić and McCool extends to some domains of Krull dimension 1, in particular to certain Dedekind domains. This result, which represents a two-dimensional anomaly is the best possible in the following sense. It is well known that SL2(R) = U2(R), when R is a domain of Krull dimension zero, i.e. when R is a field. It is already known that for some arithmetic Dedekind domains A, the factor group SL2(A)/U2(A) has a free quotient of finite (and not infinite) rank.

For hyperbolic systems in one spatial dimension ∂tu + C∂xu = f(u), u(t, x) ∈ ℝd, we study sequences of oscillating solutions by their Young-measure limit, μ, and develop tools to study the evolution of μ directly from the Young measure, v, of the initial data. For d ≤ 2 we construct a flow mapping, St, such that μ(t) = St(v) is the unique Young-measure solution for initial value v. For d ≥ 3 we establish existence and uniqueness of Young measures that have product structure, that is the oscillations in direction of the Riemann invariants are independent. Counterexamples show that neither μ nor the marginal measures of the Riemann invariants are uniquely determined from v, except if a certain structural interaction condition for f is satisfied. We rely on ideas of transport theory and make use of the Wasserstein distance on the space of probability measures.

A stability theorem is proved for non-monotone waves in a reaction–diffusion system modelling three competing species, where few stability results currently exist for systems with more than two species. Asymptotic stability with respect to the nonlinear equations is established by showing that the spectrum of the linearized operator has no unstable eigenvalues and that the zero eigenvalue associated with translation invariance is simple. The result is obtained in a singular regime where strong pattern formation occurs and solutions to the linear equations can be separated into particular solutions related to the fast–slow structure of the underlying wave and its singular limit. In this system both the fast and slow waves can contribute an instability and the global characterization of these solutions must address certain difficulties not present in lower-dimensional systems. The topological index of Alexander, Gardner and Jones is used to count the eigenvalues of the linear operator.

Let m: [ 0, ∞) → [ 0, ∞) be an increasing continuous function with m(t) = 0 if and only if t = 0, m(t) → ∞ as t → ∞ and Ω C ℝN a bounded domain. In this note we show that for every r > 0 there exists a function ur solving the minimization problem

where Moreover, the function ur is a weak solution to the corresponding Euler–Lagrange equation

for some λ > 0. We emphasize that no Δ2-condition is needed for M or M; so the associated functionals are not continuously differentiable, in general.

For an unbounded self-adjoint operator A in a separable Hilbert space ℌ and scalar real-valued functions a(t), q(t), r(t), t ∊ ℝ, consider the differential expression

acting on ℌ-valued functions f(t), t ∊ ℝ, and degenerating at t = 0. Let Sp denotethe corresponding minimal symmetric operator in the Hilbert space (ℝ) of ℌ-valued functions f(t) with ℌ-norm ∥f(t)∥ square integrable on the line. The infiniteness of the deficiency indices of Sp, 1/2 < p < 3/2, is proved under natural restrictions on a(t), r(t), q(t). The conditions implying their equality to 0 for p ≥ 3/2 are given. In the case of a self-adjoint differential operator A acting in ℌ = L2(ℝn), the first of these results implies examples of symmetric degenerate differential operators with infinite deficiency indices in L2(ℝm), m = n + 1.

The group of self-homotopy equivalences Aut(X ć Y) is represented as a product of two subgroups under the assumption that the self-equivalences of X ć Y can be diagonalized. Moreover, an analogous result holds for the subgroup Aut#(X ć Y) of self-equivalences, which induce identity automorphisms on homotopy groups. Other methods for the computation of Aut(X ć Y) are studied, especially when the spaces involved have an H- or coH-structure, and several examples are considered, among others, some non-simply connected H-spaces of rank 2.

In this paper, we study the existence of periodic solutions of neutral functional differential equations (NFDEs). A topological transversality theorem is used to obtain fixed points of certain nonlinear compact operators, which correspond to periodic solutions of the original differential equations. The method relies on a priori bounds on periodic solutions to a family of appropriately constructed NFDEs. A general existence theorem is proved and several illustrative examples are given where we use Liapunov-like functions in deriving such a priori bounds on periodic solutions. Due to the topological nature of the approach, the theorem applies as well to NFDEs of mixed type and NFDEs with state-dependent delay. Some comparisons between our results and the existing ones are also provided.