We study the periodic homogenization of first order front propagations. Based on PDE methods, we provide a simple proof that, for n ≥ 3, the class of centrally symmetric polytopes with rational coordinates and nonempty interior is admissible as effective fronts, which was also established by I. Babenko and F. Balacheff [Sur la forme de la boule unit\'e de la norme stable unidimensionnelle, Manuscripta Math. 119 (2006) 347--358] and M. Jotz [Hedlund metrics and the stable norm, Diff. Geometry Appl. 27 (2009) 543--550] in the form of stable norms as an extension of G. A. Hedlund's classical result [Geodesics on a two-dimensional Riemannian manifold with periodic coefficients, Ann. Math. 33 (1932) 719--739]. Besides, we obtain the optimal convergence rate of the homogenization problem for this class.

We investigate Lamé systems in periodically perforated domains, and establish quantitative homogenization results in the setting where the domain is clamped at the boundary of the holes. Our method is based on layer potentials and it provides a unified proof for various regimes of hole-cell ratios (the ratio between the size of the holes and the size of the periodic cells), and, more importantly, it yields natural correctors that facilitate error estimates. A key ingredient is the asymptotic analysis for the rescaled cell problems, and this is studied by exploring the convergence of the periodic layer potentials for the Lamé system to those in the whole space when the period tends to infinity.

We consider admissible weak solutions to the compressible Euler system with source terms, which include rotating shallow water system and the Euler system with damping as special examples. In the case of anti-symmetric sources such as rotations, for general piecewise Lipschitz initial densities and some suitably constructed initial momentum, we obtain infinitely many global admissible weak solutions. Furthermore, we construct a class of finite-states admissible weak solutions to the Euler system with anti-symmetric sources. Under the additional smallness assumption on the initial densities, we also obtain multiple global-in-time admissible weak solutions for more general sources including damping. The basic framework are based on the convex integration method developed by De~Lellis and Sz\'{e}kelyhidi \cite{dLSz1,dLSz2} for the Euler system. One of the main ingredients of this paper is the construction of specified localized plane wave perturbations which are compatible with a given source term.

For the physical vacuum free boundary problem with the sound speed being C^1/2-Holder continuous near vacuum boundaries of the one-dimensional compressible Euler equations with damping, the global existence of the smooth solution is proved, which is shown to converge to the Barenblatt self-similar solution for the porous media equation with the same total mass when the initial datum is a small perturbation of the Barenblatt solution. The pointwise convergence with a rate of density, the convergence rate of velocity in the supremum norm, and the precise expanding rate of the physical vacuum boundaries are also given. The proof is based on a construction of higher-order weighted functionals with both space and time weights capturing the behavior of solutions both near vacuum states and in large time, an introduction of a new ansatz, higher-order nonlinear energy estimates, and elliptic estimates.

The contact discontinuity is one of the basic wave patterns in gas motions. The stability of contact discontinuities with general perturbations for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation is a long standing open problem. General perturbations of a contact discontinuity may generate diffusion waves which evolve and interact with the contact wave to cause analytic difficulties. In this paper, we succeed in obtaining the large time asymptotic stability of a contact wave pattern with a convergence rate for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation in a uniform way. One of the key observations is that even though the energy norm of the deviation of the solution from the contact wave may grow at the rate (1+ t) 1 4, it can be compensated by the decay in the energy norm of the derivatives of the deviation which is of the order of (1+ t) 1 4. Thus, this reciprocal order of decay rates for the time