This paper concerns the well-posedness theory of the motion of a physical vacuum for the compressible Euler equations with or without self-gravitation. First, a general uniqueness theorem of classical solutions is proved for the three dimensional general motion. Second, for the spherically symmetric motions, without imposing the compatibility condition of the first derivative being zero at the center of symmetry, a new local-in-time existence theory is established in a functional space involving less derivatives than those constructed for three-dimensional motions in (Coutand et al., Commun Math Phys 296:559–587, 2010; Coutand and Shkoller, Arch Ration Mech Anal 206:515–616, 2012; Jang andMasmoudi,Well-posedness of compressible Euler equations in a physical vacuum, 2008) by constructing suitable weights and cutoff functions featuring the behavior of solutions near both the center of the symmetry and the moving vacuum boundary.

In the presence of vacuum, the physical entropy for polytropic gases behaves singularly and it is thus a challenge to study its dynamics. It is shown in this paper that the boundedness of the entropy can be propagated up to any finite time provided that the initial vacuum presents only at far fields with sufficiently slow decay of the initial density. More precisely, for the Cauchy problem of the onedimensional heat conductive compressible Navier--Stokes equations, the global well-posedness of strong solutions and uniform boundedness of the corresponding entropy are established, as long as the initial density vanishes only at far fields with a rate no more than $O(\frac{1}{x^2})$. The main tools of proving the uniform boundedness of the entropy are some singularly weighted energy estimates carefully designed for the heat conductive compressible Navier--Stokes equations and an elaborate De Giorgi type iteration technique for some classes of degenerate parabolic equations. The De Giorgi type iterations are carried out to different equations in establishing the lower and upper bounds of the entropy.

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We study the averaged behavior of interfaces moving with oscillatory normal velocity that is periodic in time and stationary ergodic in space. This problem can be interpreted as a homogenization problem of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with a positively homogeneous and time dependent Hamiltonian. In an earlier work, we studied the setting when the environment is periodic in space and random in time, and established homogenization results through the averaging of reachable sets. In the present setting, we show that the minimal travel time between two spatial points, which now depends also on a starting time, has a deterministic averaging limit that is independent of the starting time. This averaged travel time function is then shown to determine the effective behavior of the moving interfaces.

Consider the following elliptic system: \begin{equation*} \left\{\aligned&-\ve^2\Delta u_1+\lambda_1u_1=\mu_1u_1^3+\alpha_1u_1^{p-1}+\beta u_2^2u_1\quad&\text{in }\Omega,\\ &-\ve^2\Delta u_2+\lambda_2u_2=\mu_2u_2^3+\alpha_2u_2^{p-1}+\beta u_1^2u_2\quad&\text{in }\Omega,\\ &u_1,u_2>0\quad\text{in }\Omega,\quad u_1=u_2=0\quad\text{on }\partial\Omega,\endaligned\right. \end{equation*} where $\Omega\subset\bbr^4$ is a bounded domain, $\lambda_i,\mu_i,\alpha_i>0$ $(i=1,2)$ and $\beta\not=0$ are constants, $\ve>0$ is a small parameter and $2<p<2^*=4$. By using variational methods, we study the existence of ground state solutions to this system for sufficiently small $\ve>0$. The concentration behaviors of least-energy solutions as $\ve\to0^+$ are also studied. Furthermore, by combining elliptic estimates and local energy estimates, we obtain the locations of these spikes as $\ve\to0^+$.