The sine-Gordon (SG) equation and perturbed nonlinear Schrdinger (NLS) equations are studied numerically for modeling the propagation of two space dimensional (2D) localized pulses (the so-called <i>light bullets</i>) in nonlinear dispersive optical media. We begin with the (2+1) SG equation obtained as an asymptotic reduction in the two level dissipationless MaxwellBloch system, followed by the review on the perturbed NLS equation in 2D for SG pulse envelopes, which is globally well posed and has all the relevant higher order terms to regularize the collapse of standard critical (cubic focusing) NLS. The perturbed NLS is approximated by truncating the nonlinearity into finite higher order terms undergoing focusingdefocusing cycles. Efficient semi-implicit sine pseudospectral discretizations for SG and perturbed NLS are proposed with rigorous error estimates. Numerical comparison results between light bullet

The uniqueness of positive solutions to some semilinear elliptic systems with variational structure arising from mathematical physics is proved. The key ingredient of the proof is the oscillatory behavior of solutions to linearized equations for cooperative semilinear elliptic systems of two equations on one-dimensional domains, and it is shown that the stability of the positive solutions for such semilinear system is closely related to the oscillatory behavior.

In this paper we study the asymptotic nonlinear stability of discrete shocks for the Lax-Friedrichs scheme for approximating general m×m systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws. It is shown that weak single discrete shocks for such a scheme are nonlinearly stable in the Lp-norm for all p ≧ 1, provided that the sums of the initial perturbations equal zero. These results should shed light on the convergence of the numerical solution constructed by the Lax-Friedrichs scheme for the single-shock solution of system of hyperbolic conservation laws. If the Riemann solution corresponding to the given far-field states is a superposition of m single shocks from each characteristic family, we show that the corresponding multiple discrete shocks are nonlinearly stable in Lp (P ≧ 2). These results are proved by using both a weighted estimate and a characteristic energy method based on the internal structures of the discrete shocks and the essential monotonicity of the Lax-Friedrichs scheme.

As a continuation of [28], the paper aims to justify the high Reynolds numbers limit for the MHD system with Prandtl boundary layer expansion when no-slip boundary condition is imposed on the velocity field and the perfect conducting boundary condition is given for the magnetic field. Under an assumption that the viscosity and resistivity coefficients are of the same order and the initial tangential magnetic field on the boundary is not degenerate, we justify the validity of the Prandtl boundary layer expansion and give a L8 estimate on the error by multi-scale analysis.

For strong solutions of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in bounded domains with velocity specified at the boundary, we establish the unconditional stability and convergence of discretization schemes that decouple the updates of pressure and velocity through explicit time stepping for pressure. These schemes require no solution of stationary Stokes systems, nor any compatibility between velocity and pressure spaces to ensure an inf-sup condition, and are representative of a class of highly efficient computational methods that have recently emerged. The proofs are simple, based upon a new, sharp estimate for the commutator of the Laplacian and Helmholtz projection operators. This allows us to treat an unconstrained formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations as a perturbed diffusion equation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.