We construct a conformally invariant random family of closed curves in the plane by welding of random homeomorphisms of the unit circle. The homeomorphism is constructed using the exponential of$βX$, where X is the restriction of the 2-dimensional free field on the circle and the parameter$β$is in the “high temperature” regime $$ \beta < \sqrt {2} $$ . The welding problem is solved by studying a non-uniformly elliptic Beltrami equation with a random complex dilatation. For the existence a method of Lehto is used. This requires sharp probabilistic estimates to control conformal moduli of annuli and they are proven by decomposing the free field as a sum of independent fixed scale fields and controlling the correlations of the complex dilatation restricted to dyadic cells of various scales. For the uniqueness we invoke a result by Jones and Smirnov on conformal removability of Hölder curves. Our curves are closely related to SLE($ϰ$) for$ϰ$<4.

Due to the highly degeneracy and singularities of the entropy equation, the physical entropy for viscous and heat conductive polytropic gases behave singularly in the presence of vacuum and it is thus a challenge to study its dynamics. It is shown in this paper that the uniform boundedness of the entropy and the inhomogeneous Sobolev regularities of the velocity and temperature can be propagated for viscous and heat conductive gases in $\mathbb R^3$, provided that the initial vacuum occurs only at far fields with suitably slow decay of the initial density. Precisely, it is proved that for any strong solution to the Cauchy problem of the heat conductive compressible Navier--Stokes equations, the corresponding entropy keeps uniformly bounded and the $L^2$ regularities of the velocity and temperature can be propagated, up to the existing time of the solution, as long as the initial density vanishes only at far fields with a rate no more than $O(\frac{1}{|x|^2})$. The main tools are some singularly weighted energy estimates and an elaborate De Giorgi type iteration technique. The De Giorgi type iterations are carried out to different equations in establishing the lower and upper bounds of the entropy.

For a bipolar hydrodynamic model of semiconductors in the form of EulerPoisson equations with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, in this paper we first heuristically analyze the most probable asymptotic profile (the so-called diffusion waves) and then prove this long-time behavior rigorously. For this, we construct correction functions to show the convergence of the original solution to the diffusion wave with optimal convergence rates by the energy method. Moreover, in the case with Dirichlet boundary condition, when the initial perturbation is in some weighted L^1 space, a faster and optimal convergence rate is also given.

An analogue of the well-known $$ \frac{3}{{16}} $$ lower bound for the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian for a congruence hyperbolic surface is proven for a congruence tower associated with any non-elementary subgroup$L$of SL(2,$Z$). The proof in the case that the Hausdorff of the limit set of$L$is bigger than $$ \frac{1}{2} $$ is based on a general result which allows one to transfer such bounds from a combinatorial version to this archimedian setting. In the case that delta is less than $$ \frac{1}{2} $$ we formulate and prove a somewhat weaker version of this phenomenon in terms of poles of the corresponding dynamical zeta function. These “spectral gaps” are then applied to sieving problems on orbits of such groups.

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.