Nonlinear Elliptic Equations Of The Second Order

Approach your problems from the It isn't that they can't see the right end and begin with the solution. It is that they can't see answers. Then one day, perhaps the problem. you will find the final question. G.K. Chesterton. The Scandal of 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. Feathers' in R. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of mono graphs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theor.etical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces.

Nonlinear elliptic differential equations are a diverse subject with important applications to the physical and social sciences and engineering. They also arise naturally in geometry. In particular, much of the progress in the area in the twentieth century was driven by geometric applications, from the Bernstein problem to the existence of Kähler–Einstein metrics. This book, designed as a textbook, provides a detailed discussion of the Dirichlet problems for quasilinear and fully nonlinear elliptic differential equations of the second order with an emphasis on mean curvature equations and on Monge–Ampère equations. It gives a user-friendly introduction to the theory of nonlinear elliptic equations with special attention given to basic results and the most important techniques. Rather than presenting the topics in their full generality, the book aims at providing self-contained, clear, and “elementary” proofs for results in important special cases. This book will serve as a valuable resource for graduate students or anyone interested in this subject.

This book presents applications of noncommutative and nonassociative algebras to constructing unusual (nonclassical and singular) solutions to fully nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations of second order. The methods described in the book are used to solve a longstanding problem of the existence of truly weak, nonsmooth viscosity solutions. Moreover, the authors provide an almost complete description of homogeneous solutions to fully nonlinear elliptic equations. It is shown that even in the very restricted setting of "Hessian equations", depending only on the eigenvalues of the Hessian, these equations admit homogeneous solutions of all orders compatible with known regularity for viscosity solutions provided the space dimension is five or larger. To the contrary, in dimension four or less the situation is completely different, and our results suggest strongly that there are no nonclassical homogeneous solutions at all in dimensions three and four. Thus this book gives a complete list of dimensions where nonclassical homogeneous solutions to fully nonlinear uniformly elliptic equations do exist; this should be compared with the situation of, say, ten years ago when the very existence of nonclassical viscosity solutions was not known.

This monograph looks at several trends in the investigation of singular solutions of nonlinear elliptic and parabolic equations. It discusses results on the existence and properties of weak and entropy solutions for elliptic second-order equations and some classes of fourth-order equations with L1-data and questions on the removability of singularities of solutions to elliptic and parabolic second-order equations in divergence form. It looks at localized and nonlocalized singularly peaking boundary regimes for different classes of quasilinear parabolic second- and high-order equations in divergence form. The book will be useful for researchers and post-graduate students that specialize in the field of the theory of partial differential equations and nonlinear analysis. Contents: Foreword Part I: Nonlinear elliptic equations with L^1-data Nonlinear elliptic equations of the second order with L^1-data Nonlinear equations of the fourth order with strengthened coercivity and L^1-data Part II: Removability of singularities of the solutions of quasilinear elliptic and parabolic equations of the second order Removability of singularities of the solutions of quasilinear elliptic equations Removability of singularities of the solutions of quasilinear parabolic equations Quasilinear elliptic equations with coefficients from the Kato class Part III: Boundary regimes with peaking for quasilinear parabolic equations Energy methods for the investigation of localized regimes with peaking for parabolic second-order equations Method of functional inequalities in peaking regimes for parabolic equations of higher orders Nonlocalized regimes with singular peaking Appendix: Formulations and proofs of the auxiliary results Bibliography

In the last 40 years semi-linear elliptic equations became a central subject of study in the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations. On the one hand, the interest in this area is of a theoretical nature, due to its deep relations to other branches of mathematics, especially linear and nonlinear harmonic analysis, dynamical systems, differential geometry and probability. On the other hand, this study is of interest because of its applications. Equations of this type come up in various areas such as problems of physics and astrophysics, curvature problems in Riemannian geometry, logistic problems related for instance to population models and, most importantly, the study of branching processes and superdiffusions in the theory of probability. The aim of this book is to present a comprehensive study of boundary value problems for linear and semi-linear second order elliptic equations with measure data. We are particularly interested in semi-linear equations with absorption. The interactions between the diffusion operator and the absorption term give rise to a large class of nonlinear phenomena in the study of which singularities and boundary trace play a central role. This book is accessible to graduate students and researchers with a background in real analysis and partial differential equations.

The goal of the book is to extend classical regularity theorems for solutions of linear elliptic partial differential equations to the context of fully nonlinear elliptic equations. This class of equations often arises in control theory, optimization, and other applications. The authors give a detailed presentation of all the necessary techniques. Instead of treating these techniques in their greatest generality, they outline the key ideas and prove the results needed for developing the subsequent theory. Topics discussed in the book include the theory of viscosity solutions for nonlinear equations, the Alexandroff estimate and Krylov-Safonov Harnack-type inequality for viscosity solutions, uniqueness theory for viscosity solutions, Evans and Krylov regularity theory for convex fully nonlinear equations, and regularity theory for fully nonlinear equations with variable coefficients.

There are two parts to the book. In the first part, a complete introduction of various kinds of a priori estimate methods for the Dirichlet problem of second order elliptic partial differential equations is presented. In the second part, the existence and regularity theories of the Dirichlet problem for linear and nonlinear second order elliptic partial differential systems are introduced. The book features appropriate materials and is an excellent textbook for graduate students. The volume is also useful as a reference source for undergraduate mathematics majors, graduate students, professors, and scientists.

From the reviews: "This is a book of interest to any having to work with differential equations, either as a reference or as a book to learn from. The authors have taken trouble to make the treatment self-contained. It (is) suitable required reading for a PhD student. Although the material has been developed from lectures at Stanford, it has developed into an almost systematic coverage that is much longer than could be covered in a year's lectures". Newsletter, New Zealand Mathematical Society, 1985 "Primarily addressed to graduate students this elegant book is accessible and useful to a broad spectrum of applied mathematicians". Revue Roumaine de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées,1985