Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In this thesis, some eigenvalue inequalities for Klein-Gordon operators and restricted to a bounded domain in Rd are proved. Such operators become very popular recently as they arise in many problems ranges from mathematical finance to crystal dislocations, especially the relativistic quantum mechanics and \alpha-stable stochastic processes. Many of the results obtained here concern finding bounds for some spectral functions of these operators. The subject, which is well developed for the Laplacian, is examined from the spectral theory perspective through some of the tools used to prove analogues results for the Laplacian. This work highlights some important results, sparking interest in constructing a similar theory for Klein-Gordon operators. For instance, the Weyl asymptotics and semiclassical bounds for the operator Hm, are developed. As a result, a Berezin-Li-Yau type inequality is derived and an improvement of the bound is proved.

Many problems of fundamental and practical importance contain multiple scale solutions. Composite and nano materials, flow and transport in heterogeneous porous media, and turbulent flow are examples of this type. Direct numerical simulations of these multiscale problems are extremely difficult due to the wide range of length scales in the underlying physical problems. Direct numerical simulations using a fine grid are very expensive. Developing effective multiscale methods that can capture accurately the large scale solution on a coarse grid has become essential in many engineering applications. In this talk, I will use two examples to illustrate how multiscale mathematics analysis can impact engineering applications. The first example is to develop multiscale computational methods to upscale multi-phase flows in strongly heterogeneous porous media. Multi-phase flows arise in many applications, ranging from petroleum engineering, contaminant transport, and fluid dynamics applications. Multiscale computational methods guided by multiscale analysis have already been adopted by the industry in their flow simulators. In the second example, we will show how to develop a systematic multiscale analysis for incompressible flows in three space dimensions. Deriving a reliable turbulent model has a significant impact in many engineering applications, including the aircraft design. This is known to be an extremely challenging problem. So far, most of the existing turbulent models are based on heuristic closure assumption and involve unknown parameters which need to be fitted by experimental data. We will show that how multiscale analysis can be used to develop a systematic multiscale method that does not involve any closure assumption and there are no adjustable parameters.

The Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation is a two-dimensional dispersivewave equation which was proposed to study the stability of one solitonsolution of the KdV equation under the influence of weak transversalperturbations. It is well know that some closed-form solutions can beobtained by function which have a Wronskian determinant form. It is ofinterest to study KP with an arbitrary initial condition and see whetherthe solution converges to any closed-form solution asymptotically. Toreveal the answer to this question both numerically and theoretically, weconsider different types of initial conditions, including one-linesoliton, V-shape wave and cross-shape wave, and investigate the behaviorof solutions asymptotically. We provides a detail description ofclassification on the results. The challenge of numerical approach comes from the unbounded domain andunvanished solutions in the infinity. In order to do numerical computationon the finite domain, boundary conditions need to be imposed carefully.Due to the non-periodic boundary conditions, the standard spectral methodwith Fourier methods involving trigonometric polynomials cannot be used.We proposed a new spectral method with a window technique which will makethe boundary condition periodic and allow the usage of the classicalapproach. We demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of our methodsthrough numerous simulations.

To come to grips with consciousness, I postulate that living entities in general, and human beings in particular, are mechanisms... marvelous mechanisms to be sure but not magical ones... just mechanisms. On this basis, I look to explain some of the paradoxes of consciousness such as Samuel Johnson's "All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it." I will explain concepts of self-awareness and free will from a mechanistic view. My explanations make use of computer science and suggest why these phenomena would exist even in a completely deterministic world. This is particularly striking for free will. The impressions of our senses, like the sense of the color blue, the sound of a tone, etc. are to be expected of a mechanism with enormously many inputs categorized into similarity classes of sight, sound, etc. Other phenomena such as the "bite" of pain are works in progress. I show the direction that my thinking takes and say something about what I've found and what I'm still looking for. Fortunately, the sciences are discovering a great deal about the brain, and their discoveries help enormously in guiding and verifying the results of this work.