What is the shape of a uniformly massive object that generates a gravitational potential equivalent to that of two equal point-masses? If the weight of each point-mass is sufficiently small compared to the distance between the points then the answer is a pair of balls of equal radius, one centered at each of the two points, but otherwise it is a certain domain of revolution about the axis passing through the two points. The existence and uniqueness of such a domain is known, but an explicit parameterization is known only in the plane where the region is referred to as a Neumann oval. We construct a four-dimensional “Neumann ovaloid”, solving explicitly this inverse potential problem.

No abstract uploaded!

This paper investigates the generalized Keller-Segel (KS) system with a nonlocal diffusion term -ν(-Δ) α/2 ρ (1 < α < 2). Firstly, the global existence of weak solutions is proved for the initial density ρ0 ∈ L01∩L d/α (60d) (d ≥ 2) with [norm of matrix]ρ0[norm of matrix] d/α < K, where K is a universal constant only depending on d, α, ν. Moreover, the conservation of mass holds true and the weak solution satisfies some hyper-contractive and decay estimates in Lr for any 1 < r < ∞. Secondly, for the more general initial data ρ0 ∈ L01 ∩ L05(60d) (d = 2, 3), the local existence is obtained. Thirdly, for ρ0 ∈ L01 (60d; (1 + |x|)dx ∩ L∞(60d)( d ≥ 2) with [norm of matrix]ρ0[norm of matrix]d/α < K, we prove the uniqueness and stability of weak solutions under Wasserstein metric through the method of associating the KS equation with a self-consistent stochastic process driven by the rotationally invariant α-stable Lévy process Lα(t). Also, we prove the weak solution is L1 bounded uniformly in time. Lastly, we consider the N-particle interacting system with the Lévy process Lα(t) and the Newtonian potential aggregation and prove that the expectation of collision time between particles is below a universal constant if the moment ∫60d |x| γρ0dx for some 1 < γ < α is below a universal constant K γ and ν is also below a universal constant. Meanwhile, we prove the propagation of chaos as N → ∞ for the interacting particle system with a cut-off parameter ε ~ (ln N)-1/d, and show that the mean field limit equation is exactly the generalized KS equation.

This paper is devoted to a functional analytic approach to the subelliptic oblique derivative problem for the usual Laplacian with a complex parameter λ. We solve the long-standing open problem of the asymptotic eigenvalue distribution for the homogeneous oblique derivative problem when |λ| tends to ∞. We prove the spectral properties of the closed realization of the Laplacian similar to the elliptic (non-degenerate) case. In the proof we make use of Boutet de Monvel calculus in order to study the resolvents and their adjoints in the framework of L2 Sobolev spaces.

The uniqueness of positive solutions to some semilinear elliptic systems with variational structure arising from mathematical physics is proved. The key ingredient of the proof is the oscillatory behavior of solutions to linearized equations for cooperative semilinear elliptic systems of two equations on one-dimensional domains, and it is shown that the stability of the positive solutions for such semilinear system is closely related to the oscillatory behavior.