In this paper, we establish the local existence and uniqueness of multi-dimensional contact discontinuities for the ideal compressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in Sobolev spaces, which are most typical interfacial waves for astrophysical plasmas and prototypical fundamental waves for hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. Such waves are characteristic discontinuities for which there is no flow across the discontinuity surface while the magnetic field crosses transversely, which lead to a two-phase free boundary problem where the pressure, velocity and magnetic field are continuous across the interface whereas the entropy and density may have jumps. To overcome the difficulties of possible nonlinear Rayleigh--Taylor instability and loss of derivatives, here we use crucially the Lagrangian formulation and the Cauchy formula (1882) for the magnetic field. This enables us to capture the boundary regularizing effect of the transversal magnetic field on the flow map, and on the other hand, it allows us to define a special good unknown of the magnetic field to get around the troublesome boundary integrals due to the transversality of the magnetic field. In particular, our result removes the additional assumption of the Rayleigh--Taylor sign condition required by Morando, Tarkhinin and Trebeschi (\emph{J. Differential Equations} \textbf{258} (2015), no. 7, 2531--2571; \emph{Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.} \textbf{228} (2018), no. 2, 697--742) and holds for both 2D and 3D and hence gives a complete answer to the two open questions raised therein. Moreover, there is {\it no loss of derivatives} in our well-posedness theory. The solution is constructed as {\it the inviscid limit} of solutions to well-chosen nonlinear approximate problems for the two-phase compressible viscous non-resistive MHD.

A longstanding question in the dual Brunn–Minkowski theory is “What are the dual analogues of Federer’s curvature measures for convex bodies?” The answer to this is provided. This leads naturally to dual versions of Minkowski-type problems: What are necessary and sufficient conditions for a Borel measure to be a dual curvature measure of a convex body? Sufficient conditions, involving measure concentration, are established for the existence of solutions to these problems.

It is a classical result of Sobolev spaces that any $H^1$ function has a well-defined $H^{1/2}$ trace on the boundary of a sufficient regular domain. In this work, we present stronger and more general versions of such a trace theorem in a new nonlocal function space $\cS(\Omega)$ satisfying $H^1(\Omega)\subset \cS(\Omega)\subset L^2(\Omega)$. The new space $\cS(\Omega)$ is associated with a nonlocal norm characterized by a nonlocal interaction kernel that is defined heterogeneously with a special localization feature on the boundary. Through the heterogeneous localization, we are able to show that the $H^{1/2}$ norm of the trace on the boundary can be controlled by the nonlocal norm that are weaker than the classical $H^1$ norm. In fact, the trace theorems can be essentially shown without imposing any extra regularity of the function in the interior of the domain other than being square integrable. Implications of the new trace theorems to the coupling of local and nonlocal equations and possible further generalizations are also discussed.