The nonlinear asymptotic stability of Lane-Emden solutions is proved in this paper for spherically symmetric motions of viscous gaseous stars with the density dependent shear and bulk viscosities which vanish at the vacuum, when the adiabatic exponent γ lies in the stability regime (4/3, 2), by establishing the global-in-time regularity uniformly up to the vacuum boundary for the vacuum free boundary problem of the compressible Navier-Stokes-Poisson systems with spherical symmetry, which ensures the global existence of strong solutions capturing the precise physical behavior that the sound speed is C1/2-Hölder continuous across the vacuum boundary, the large time asymptotic uniform convergence of the evolving vacuum boundary, density and velocity to those of Lane-Emden solutions with detailed convergence rates, and the detailed large time behavior of solutions near the vacuum boundary. Those uniform convergence are of fundamental importance in the study of vacuum free boundary problems which are missing in the previous results for global weak solutions. Moreover, the results obtained in this paper apply to much broader cases of viscosities than those in Fang and Zhang (Arch Ration Mech Anal 191:195–243, 2009) for the theory of weak solutions when the adiabatic exponent γ lies in the most physically relevant range. Finally, this paper extends the previous local-in-time theory for strong solutions to a global-in-time one.

We study the stability of traveling waves of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nonzero condition at infinity obtained via a constrained variational approach. Two important physical models for this are the Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation and the cubic-quintic equation. First, under a non-degeneracy condition we prove a sharp instability criterion for 3D traveling waves of (GP), which had been conjectured in the physical literature. This result is also extended for general nonlinearity and higher dimensions, including 4D (GP) and 3D cubic-quintic equations. Second, for cubic-quintic type nonlinearity, we construct slow traveling waves and prove their nonlinear instability in any dimension. For dimension two, the non-degeneracy condition is also proved for these slow traveling waves. For general traveling waves without vortices (that is nonvanishing) and with general nonlinearity in any dimension, we find a sharp condition for linear instability. Third, we prove that any 2D traveling wave of (GP) is transversally unstable, and we find the sharp interval of unstable transversal wave numbers. Near unstable traveling waves of all of the above cases, we construct unstable and stable invariant manifolds.

In a recent important breakthrough D. Christodoulou has solved a long standing problem of General Relativity of evolutionary formation of trapped surfaces in the Einstein-vacuum space-times. He has identified an open set of regular initial conditions on an outgoing null hypersurface (both finite and at past null infinity) leading to a formation a trapped surface in the corresponding vacuum space-time to the future of the initial outgoing hypersurface and another incoming null hypersurface with the prescribed Minkowskian data. In this paper we give a simpler proof for a finite problem by enlarging the admissible set of initial conditions and, consistent with this, relaxing the corresponding propagation estimates just enough that a trapped surface still forms. We also reduce the number of derivatives needed in the argument from two derivatives of the curvature to just one. More importantly, the proof, which can be easily localized with respect to angular sectors, has the potential for further developments.

In this paper, we study a new class of fractional partial differential equations which are obtained by minimizing variational problems in fractional Sobolev spaces. We introduce a notion of fractional gradient which has the potential to extend to many classical results in the Sobolev spaces to the nonlocal and fractional setting in a natural way.

In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of positive solutions of fractional Hardy-Henon equation with an isolated singularity at the origin. We give a classification of isolated singularities of positive solutions near x = 0. Further, we prove the asymptotic behavior of positive singular solutions. These results parallel those known for the Laplacian counterpart proved by Caffarelli, Gidas and Spruck (Caffarelli, Gidas and Spruck in Comm Pure Appl Math, 1981, 1989), but the technique is very different, since the ODEs analysis is a missing ingredient in the fractional case. Our proofs are based on a monotonicity formula, combined with a blow up (down) argument, the Kelvin transformation and uniqueness of solutions of related degenerate equations on semi spherical surface. We also investigate isolated singularities located at infinity of fractional Hardy-Henon equation.