In this paper, we initiate the study of the instability of naked singularities without symmetries. In a series of papers, Christodoulou proved that naked singularities are not stable in the context of the spherically symmetric Einstein equations coupled with a massless scalar field. We study in this paper the next simplest case: a characteristic initial value problem of this coupled system with the initial data given on two intersecting null cones, the incoming one of which is assumed to be spherically symmetric and singular at its vertex, and the outgoing one of which has no symmetries. It is shown that, arbitrarily fixing the initial scalar field, the set of the initial conformal metrics on the outgoing null cone such that the maximal future development does not have any sequences of closed trapped surfaces approaching the singularity, is of first category in the whole space in which the shear tensors are continuous. Such a set can then be viewed as exceptional, although the exceptionality is weaker than the at least 1 co-dimensionality in spherical symmetry. Almost equivalently, it is also proved that, arbitrarily fixing an incoming null cone C––ε to the future of the initial incoming null cone, the set of the initial conformal metrics such that the maximal future development has at least one closed trapped surface before C––ε, contains an open and dense subset of the whole space. Since the initial scalar field can be chosen such that the singularity is naked if the initial shear is set to be zero, we may say that the spherical naked singularities of a self-gravitating scalar field are not stable under gravitational perturbations. This in particular gives new families of non-spherically symmetric gravitational perturbations different from the original spherically symmetric scalar perturbations given by Christodoulou.

In this paper, we study entire solutions of the Allen-Chan equation in one-dimensional Euclidean space. This equation is a scalar reaction-diffusion equation with a bistable nonlinearity. It is well-known that this equation admits three different types of traveling fronts connecting two of its three constant states. Under certain conditions on the wave speeds, the existence of entire solutions with merging these three traveling fronts is shown by constructing a suitable pair of super-sub-solutions.

In this paper, we study the fluid-dynamic limit for the one-dimensional Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation in the presence of boundaries. We consider an analogue of Maxwell's diffusive and reflective boundary conditions. The boundary layers can be classified as either compressive or expansive in terms of the associated characteristic fields. We show that both expansive and compressive boundary layers (before detachment) are nonlinearly stable and that the layer effects are localized so that the fluid dynamic approximation is valid away from the boundary. We also show that the same conclusion holds for short time without the structural conditions on the boundary layers. A rigorous estimate for the distance between the kinetic solution and the fluid-dynamic solution in terms of the mean-free path in theL∞-norm is obtained provided that the interior fluid flow is smooth. The rate of convergence is optimal.

In this paper, we study the transonic shock problem for the full compressible Euler system in a general two-dimensional de Laval nozzle as proposed in Courant and Friedrichs (Supersonic flow and shock waves, Interscience, New York, 1948): given the appropriately large exit pressure pe(x), if the upstream flow is still supersonic behind the throat of the nozzle, then at a certain place in the diverging part of the nozzle, a shock front intervenes and the gas is compressed and slowed down to subsonic speed so that the position and the strength of the shock front are automatically adjusted such that the end pressure at the exit becomes pe(x). We solve this problem completely for a general class of de Laval nozzles whose divergent parts are small and arbitrary perturbations of divergent angular domains for the full steady compressible Euler system. The problem can be reduced to solve a nonlinear free boundary value problem for a mixed hyperbolic–elliptic system. One of the key ingredients in the analysis is to solve a nonlinear free boundary value problem in a weighted Hölder space with low regularities for a second order quasilinear elliptic equation with a free parameter (the position of the shock curve at one wall of the nozzle) and non-local terms involving the trace on the shock of the first order derivatives of the unknown function.

We investigate the singularity formation of a 3D model that was recently proposed by Hou and Lei (2009) in [15] for axisymmetric 3D incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with swirl. The main difference between the 3D model of Hou and Lei and the reformulated 3D Navier–Stokes equations is that the convection term is neglected in the 3D model. This model shares many properties of the 3D incompressible Navier– Stokes equations. One of the main results of this paper is that we prove rigorously the finite time singularity formation of the 3D inviscid model for a class of initial boundary value problems with smooth initial data of finite energy. We also prove the global regularity of the 3D inviscid model for a class of small smooth initial data.