The paper discusses quantum graphs with a vertex coupling which interpolates between the common one of the type and a coupling introduced recently by two of the authors which exhibits a preferred orientation. Describing the interpolation family in terms of circulant matrices, we analyze the spectral and scattering property of such vertices, and investigate the band spectrum of the corresponding square lattice graph.

Shape optimization aims to optimize an objective function by changing the shape of the computational domain. In recent years, shape optimization has received considerable attentions. On the theoretical side there are several publications dealing with the existence of solution and the sensitivity analysis of the problem; see e.g., [6] and references therein.

Recently this author studied several merit functions systematically for the second-order cone complementarity problem. These merit functions were shown to enjoy some favorable properties, to provide error bounds under the condition of strong monotonicity, and to have bounded level sets under the conditions of monotonicity as well as strict feasibility. In this paper, we weaken the condition of strong monotonicity to the so-called uniform <i>P</i> ^*-property, which is a new concept recently developed for linear and nonlinear transformations on Euclidean Jordan algebra. Moreover, we replace the monotonicity and strict feasibility by the so-called <i>R</i> ₀₁ or <i>R</i> ₀₂-functions to keep the property of bounded level sets.

We consider the zero heat conductivity limit to a contact discontinuity for the mono-dimensional full compressible Navier--Stokes--Fourier system. The method is based on the relative entropy method and does not assume any smallness conditions on the discontinuity nor on the bounded variation norm of the initial data. It is proved that for any viscosity , the solution of the compressible Navier--Stokes--Fourier system (with well-prepared initial value) converges, when the heat conductivity tends to zero, to the contact discontinuity solution to the corresponding Euler system. We obtain the decay rate . It implies that the heat conductivity dominates the dissipation in the regime of the limit to a contact discontinuity. This is the first result, based on the relative entropy, of an asymptotic limit to a discontinuous solution for a system.

This paper investigates several global rigidity issues for polyhedral surfaces including inversive distance circle packings. Inversive distance circle packings are polyhedral surfaces introduced by P Bowers and K Stephenson in [Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 170, no. 805, Amer. Math. Soc.(2004)] as a generalization of Andreev and Thurstons circle packing. They conjectured that inversive distance circle packings are rigid. We prove this conjecture using recent work of R Guo [Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 363 (2011) 47574776] on the variational principle associated to the inversive distance circle packing. We also show that each polyhedral metric on a triangulated surface is determined by various discrete curvatures that we introduced in [arXiv 0612.5714], verifying a conjecture in [arXiv 0612.5714]. As a consequence, we show that the discrete Laplacian operator determines a spherical polyhedral metric.