Stochastic homogenization of nonconvex integral functionals with non-standard convex growth conditions
Abstract
Forthcoming events in this series
Steiner symmetrization is a very useful tool in the study of isoperimetric inequality. This is also due to the fact that the perimeter of a set is less or equal than the perimeter of its Steiner symmetral. In the same way, in the Gaussian setting,
it is well known that Ehrhard symmetrization does not increase the Gaussian perimeter. We will show characterization results for equality cases in both Steiner and Ehrhard perimeter inequalities. We will also characterize rigidity of equality cases. By rigidity, we mean the situation when all equality cases are trivially obtained by a translation of the Steiner symmetral (or, in the Gaussian setting, by a reflection of the Ehrhard symmetral). We will achieve this through the introduction of a suitable measure-theoretic notion of connectedness, and through a fine analysis of the barycenter function
for a special class of sets. These results are obtained in collaboration with Maria Colombo, Guido De Philippis, and Francesco Maggi.
This talk will focus on extremizers for
a family of Fourier restriction inequalities on planar curves. It turns
out that, depending on whether or not a certain geometric condition
related to the curvature is satisfied, extremizing sequences of
nonnegative functions may or may not have a subsequence which converges
to an extremizer. We hope to describe the method of proof, which is of
concentration compactness flavor, in some detail. Tools include bilinear
estimates, a variational calculation, a modification of the usual
method of stationary phase and several explicit computations.
We will present three different recent applications of cell motion in biology: (i) Movement of epithelial sheets and rosette formation, (ii) neural crest cell migrations, (iii) acid-mediated cancer cell invasion. While the talk will focus primarily on the biological application, it will be shown that all of these processes can be represented by reaction-diffusion equations with nonlinear diffusion term.
I will introduce the physical phenomena of transonic shocks, and review the progresses on related boundary value problems of the steady compressible Euler equations. Some Ideas/methods involved in the studies will be presented through specific examples. The talk is based upon joint works with my collaborators.
TBA
In this talk we are concerned with the stability of steady transonic shocks in supersonic flow around a wedge. 2-D and M-D potential stability will be presented.
This talk is based on the joint works with Prof. G.-Q. Chen, and Prof. S.X. Chen.
We study the behavior of atomistic models under uniaxial tension and investigate the system for critical fracture loads. We rigorously prove that in the discrete-to- continuum limit the minimal energy satisfies a particular cleavage law with quadratic response to small boundary displacements followed by a sharp constant cut-off beyond some critical value. Moreover, we show that the minimal energy is attained by homogeneous elastic configurations in the subcritical case and that beyond critical loading cleavage along specific crystallographic hyperplanes is energetically favorable. We present examples of mass spring models with full nearest and next-to-nearest pair interactions and provide the limiting minimal energy and minimal configurations.
Calculus of Variations for $L^{\infty}$ functionals has a successful history of 50 years, but until recently was restricted to the scalar case. Motivated by these developments, we have recently initiated the vector-valued case. In order to handle the complicated non-divergence PDE systems which arise as the analogue of the Euler-Lagrange equations, we have introduced a theory of "weak solutions" for general fully nonlinear PDE systems. This theory extends Viscosity Solutions of Crandall-Ishii-Lions to the general vector case. A central ingredient is the discovery of a vectorial notion of extremum for maps which is a vectorial substitute of the "Maximum Principle Calculus" and allows to "pass derivatives to test maps" in a duality-free fashion. In this talk we will discuss some rudimentary aspects of these recent developments.
We prove existence of solution for evolutionary variational and quasivariational inequalities defined by a first order quasilinear operator and a variable convex set, characterized by a constraint on the absolute value of the gradient (which, in the quasi-variational case, depends on the solution itself). The only required assumption on the nonlinearity of this constraint is its continuity and positivity. The method relies on an appropriate parabolic regularization and suitable a priori estimates.
Uniqueness of solution is proved for the variational inequality. We also obtain existence of stationary solutions, by studying the asymptotic behaviour in time. We shall illustrate a simple “sand pile” example in the variational case for the transport operator were the problem is equivalent to a two-obstacles problem and the solution stabilizes in finite time. Further remarks about these properties of the solution will be presented.This is a joint work with Lisa Santos.
If times allows, using similar techniques, I shall also present the existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence of solutions of a new class of evolution variational inequalities for incompressible thick fluids. These non-Newtonian fluids with a maximum admissible shear rate may be considered as a limit class of shear-thickening or dilatant fluids, in particular, as the power limit of Ostwald-deWaele fluids.
Dislocations are line defects in crystals, and were first posited as the carriers of plastic flow in crystals in the 1934 papers of Orowan, Polanyi and Taylor. Their hypothesis has since been experimentally verified, but many details of their behaviour remain unknown. In this talk, I present joint work with Christoph Ortner on an infinite lattice model in which screw dislocations are free to be created and annihilated. We show that configurations containing single geometrically necessary dislocations exist as global minimisers of a variational problem, and hence are globally stable equilibria amongst all finite energy perturbations.
We study the nonlinear wave equations on a class of asymptotically flat Lorentzian manifolds $(\mathbb{R}^{3+1}, g)$ with time dependent inhomogeneous metric g. Based on a new approach for proving the decay of solutions of linear wave equations, we give several applications to nonlinear problems. In particular, we show the small data global existence result for quasilinear wave equations satisfying the null condition on a class of time dependent inhomogeneous backgrounds which do not settle to any particular stationary metric.
Penrose’s Weyl Curvature Hypothesis, which dates from the late 70s, is a hypothesis, motivated by observation, about the nature of the Big Bang as a singularity of the space-time manifold. His Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is a remarkable suggestion, made a few years ago and still being explored, about the nature of the universe, in the light of the current consensus among cosmologists that there is a positive cosmological constant. I shall review both sets of ideas within the framework of general relativity, and emphasise how the second set solves a problem posed by the first.
The Bayesian approach to inverse problems is of paramount importance in quantifying uncertainty about the input to and the state of a system of interest given noisy observations. Herein we consider the forward problem of the forced 2D Navier Stokes equation. The inverse problem is inference of the forcing, and possibly the initial condition, given noisy observations of the velocity field. We place a prior on the forcing which is in the form of a spatially correlated temporally white Gaussian process, and formulate the inverse problem for the posterior distribution. Given appropriate spatial regularity conditions, we show that the solution is a continuous function of the forcing. Hence, for appropriately chosen spatial regularity in the prior, the posterior distribution on the forcing is absolutely continuous with respect to the prior and is hence well-defined. Furthermore, the posterior distribution is a continuous function of the data.
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This is a joint work with Andrew Stuart and Kody Law (Warwick)
Inspired by some recents developments in the theory of small-strain elastoplasticity, we
both revisit and generalize the formulation of the quasistatic evolutionary problem in
perfect plasticity for heterogeneous materials recently given by Francfort and Giacomini.
We show that their definition of the plastic dissipation measure is equivalent to an
abstract one, where it is defined as the supremum of the dualities between the deviatoric
parts of admissible stress fields and the plastic strains. By means of this abstract
definition, a viscoplastic approximation and variational techniques from the theory of
rate-independent processes give the existence of an evolution statisfying an energy-
dissipation balance and consequently Hill's maximum plastic work principle for an
abstract and very large class of yield conditions.
Historically, decay rates have been used to provide quantitative and qualitative information on the solutions to hyperbolic conservation laws. Quantitative results include the establishment of convergence rates for approximating procedures and numerical schemes. Qualitative results include the establishment of results on uniqueness and regularity as well as the ability to visualize the waves and their evolution in time.
In this talk, I will present two decay estimates on the positive waves for systems of hyperbolic and genuinely nonlinear balance laws satisfying a dissipative mechanism. The result is obtained by employing the continuity of Glimm-type functionals and the method of generalized characteristics. Using this result on the spreading of rarefaction waves, the rate of convergence for vanishing viscosity approximations to hyperbolic balance laws will also be established. The proof relies on error estimates that measure the interaction of waves using suitable Lyapunov functionals. If time allows, a further application of the recent developments in the theory of balance laws to differential geometry will be addressed.
We consider minimisers of integral functionals $F$ over a ‘constrained’ class of $W^{1,p}$-mappings from a bounded domain into a compact Riemannian manifold $M$, i.e. minimisers of $F$ subject to holonomic constraints. Integrands of the form $f(Du)$ and the general $f(x,u,Du)$ are considered under natural strict $p$-quasiconvexity and $p$-growth assumptions for any exponent $1 < p <+\infty$. Unlike the harmonic and $p$-harmonic map case, the quasiconvexity condition requires one to linearise the map at the level of the gradient. In a bid to give a direct proof of partial $C^{1,α}-regularity for such minimisers, we developing an appropriate notion of a tangential harmonic approximation together with a discussion on the difficulties in establishing Caccioppoli-type inequalities. The need in the latter problem to construct suitable competitors to the minimiser via the so-called Luckhaus Lemma presents difficulties quite separate to that of the unconstrained case. We will give a proof of this lemma together with a discussion on the implications for higher integrability.
The proof of several properties of solutions of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws in one space dimension (existence, stability, regularity) depends on the existence of a decreasing functional, controlling the nonlinear interactions of waves. In a special case (genuinely nonlinear systems) the interaction functional is quadratic, while in the general case it is cubic. Several attempts to prove the existence of a a quadratic functional also in the most general case have been done. I will present the approach we follow in order to prove this result, an some of its implication we hope to exploit.
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Work in collaboration with Stefano Modena.