We consider the Stokes conjecture concerning the shape of extreme 2-dimensional water waves. By new geometric methods including a non-linear frequency formula, we prove the Stokes conjecture in the original variables. Our results do not rely on structural assumptions needed in previous results such as isolated singularities, symmetry and monotonicity. Part of our results extends to the mathematical problem in higher dimensions.

The diffusive transport of passive tracers or particles can be enhanced by incompressible, turbulent flow fields. Analyzing the effective behavior is a challenging problem with theoretical and practical importance in many areas of science and engineering, ranging from the transport of mass, heat, and pollutants in geophysical flows to sea ice dynamics and turbulent combustion. The long time, large scale behavior of such systems is equivalent to an enhanced diffusion process with an effective diffusivity tensor D*. Two different formulations of integral representations for D* were developed for the case of time-independent fluid velocity fields, involving spectral measures of bounded self-adjoint operators acting on vector fields and scalar fields, respectively. Here, we extend both of these approaches to the case of space-time periodic velocity fields, allowing for chaotic dynamics, providing rigorous integral representations for D* involving spectral measures of unbounded self-adjoint operators.We prove the different formulations are equivalent. Their correspondence follows from a one-to-one isometry between the underlying Hilbert spaces. We also develop a Fourier method for computing D*, which captures the phenomenon of residual diffusion related to Lagrangian chaos of a model flow. This is reflected in the spectral measure by a concentration of mass near the spectral origin.

The Cauchy problem for the barotropic compressible Navier--Stokes equations on the whole two-dimensional space with vacuum as far field density is considered. When the shear viscosity is a positive constant and the bulk one is a power function of density with the power bigger than four-thirds, the global existence and uniqueness of strong and classical solutions is established. It should be remarked that there are no restrictions on the size of the data.

For autonomous Tonelli systems on $\R^n$, we develop an intrinsic proof of the existence of generalized characteristics using sup-convolutions. This approach, together with convexity estimates for the fundamental solution, leads to new results such as the global propagation of singularities along generalized characteristics.

We consider the following mean field equation: $$\Delta_{g}v+\rho\left(\frac{h^*e^v}{\int_Mh^*e^v}-1\right)=4\pi\sum_{j=1}^N\alpha_j(\delta_{q_j}-1)$$ on M, where M is a compact Riemann surface with volume 1, $h^*$ is a positive $C^1$ function on M, and  $\alpha_j$ are constants satisfying $\alpha_j>-1$. In this paper, we derive the topological degree counting formula for noncritical values of $\rho$. We also give several applications of this formula, including existence of curvature +1 metric with conic singularities, doubly periodic solutions of electroweak theory, and a special case of self-gravitating strings.