Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Non-uniqueness of Leray solutions of the forced Navier-Stokes equations

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, August 30, 2022 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 168
Speaker
Dallas AlbrittonPrinceton University

In a seminal work, Leray demonstrated the existence of global weak solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions. Are Leray's solutions unique? This is a fundamental question in mathematical hydrodynamics, which we answer in the negative, within the `forced' category, by exhibiting two distinct Leray solutions with zero initial velocity and identical body force. This is joint work with Elia Brué and Maria Colombo.

The mathematical theory of wave turbulence

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Thursday, March 31, 2022 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 114
Speaker
Zaher HaniUniversity of Michigan

Please Note: Meeting also available online: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92742811112

Wave turbulence is the theory of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics for wave systems. Initially formulated in pioneering works of Peierls, Hasselman, and Zakharov early in the past century, wave turbulence is widely used across several areas of physics to describe the statistical behavior of various interacting wave systems. We shall be interested in the mathematical foundation of this theory, which for the longest time had not been established.

The central objects in this theory are: the "wave kinetic equation" (WKE), which stands as the wave analog of Boltzmann’s kinetic equation describing interacting particle systems, and the "propagation of chaos” hypothesis, which is a fundamental postulate in the field that lacks mathematical justification. Mathematically, the aim is to provide a rigorous justification and derivation of those two central objects; This is Hilbert’s Sixth Problem for waves. The problem attracted considerable interest in the mathematical community over the past decade or so. This culminated in recent joint works with Yu Deng (University of Southern California), which provided the first rigorous derivation of the wave kinetic equation, and justified the propagation of chaos hypothesis in the same setting.

Meeting also available online: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92742811112

On Liouville systems, Moser Trudinger inequality and Keller-Segel equations of chemotaxis

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Gershon WolanskyIsrael Institute of Technology
The Liouville equation is a semi-linear elliptic equation of exponential non-linearity. Its non-local version is a steady state of the Keller-Segel equation representing the distribution of living cells, such as slime molds. I will represent an extension of this equation to multi-agent systems and discuss some associated critical phenomena, and recent results with Debabrata Karmakar on the parabolic Keller segel system and its asymptotics in both critical and non-critical cases.

Thesis Defense: The Maxwell-Pauli Equations

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, March 10, 2020 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Thomas KiefferGeorgia Tech

Energetic stability of matter in quantum mechanics, which refers to the question of whether the ground state energy of a

many-body quantum mechanical system is finite, has long been a deep question of mathematical physics. For a system of many
non-relativistic electrons interacting with many nuclei in the absence of electromagnetic fields this question traces back
to the seminal works of Tosio Kato in 1951 and Freeman Dyson and Andrew Lenard in 1967/1968. In particular, Dyson and Lenard
showed the ground state energy of the many-body Schrödinger Hamiltonian is bounded below by a constant times the total particle
number, regardless of the size of the nuclear charges. This situation changes dramatically when electromagnetic fields and spin
interactions are present in the problem. Even for a single electron with spin interacting with a single nucleus of charge
$Z > 0$ in an external magnetic field, Jurg Fröhlich, Elliot Lieb, and Michael Loss in 1986 showed that there is no ground state
energy if $Z > Z_c$ and the ground state energy exists if $Z < Z_c$.
 
Another notion of stability in quantum mechanics is that of dynamic stability. Dynamic stability refers to the question of global
well-posedness for a system of partial differential equations that models the dynamics of many electrons coupled to their
self-generated electromagnetic field and interacting with many nuclei. The central motivating question of our PhD thesis is
whether energetic stability has any influence on the global well-posedness of the corresponding dynamical equations. In this regard,
we study the quantum mechanical many-body problem of $N$ non-relativistic electrons with spin interacting with their self-generated classical electromagnetic field and $K$ static nuclei. We model the dynamics of the electrons and their self-generated 
electromagnetic field using the so-called many-body Maxwell-Pauli equations. The main result presented is the construction
time global, finite-energy, weak solutions to the many-body Maxwell-Pauli equations under the assumption that the fine structure
constant $\alpha$ and the nuclear charges are sufficiently small to ensure energetic stability of this system. If time permits, we
will discuss several open problems that remain.

Existence and uniqueness to a fully non-linear version of the Loewner-Nirenberg problem

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, February 25, 2020 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Yanyan LiRutgers University

We consider the problem of finding on a given bounded and smooth
Euclidean domain \Omega of dimension n ≥ 3 a complete conformally flat metric whose Schouten
curvature A satisfies some equation of the form  f(\lambda(-A)) =1. This generalizes a problem
considered by Loewner and Nirenberg for the scalar curvature. We prove the existence and uniqueness of
locally Lipschitz solutions. We also show that the Lipschitz regularity is in general optimal.

Convection in a coupled free-flow porous media flow system

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Prof. Xiaomin WangSouthern University of Science and Technology

We show that the Principle of Exchange of Stability holds for convection in a layer of fluids overlaying a porous media with proper interface boundary conditions and suitable assumption on the parameters. The physically relevant small Darcy number regime as well as the dependence of the convection on various parameters will be discussed. A theory on the dependence of the depth ratio of the onset of deep convection will be put forth together with supporting numerical evidence. A decoupled uniquely solvable, unconditionally stable numerical scheme for solving the system will be presented as well.

Benjamin-Ono soliton dynamics in a slowly varying potential

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Thursday, January 16, 2020 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Zhiyuan ZhangBrown University

We consider the Benjamin Ono equation, modeling one-dimensional long interval waves in a stratified fluid, with a slowly-varying potential perturbation. Starting with near soliton initial data, we prove that the solution remains close to a soliton wave form, with parameters of position and scale evolving according to effective ODEs depending on the potential. The result is valid on a time-scale that is dynamically relevant, and highlights the effect of the perturbation. It is proved using a Lyapunov functional built from energy and mass, Taylor expansions, spectral estimates, and estimates for the Hilbert transform.

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