It is well known that the Boltzmann equation is related to the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in the field of gas dynamics. The relation is either for small Knudsen number, or, for dissipative waves in the time-asymptotic sense. In this paper, we show that rarefaction waves for the Boltzmann equation are time-asymptotic stable and tend to the rarefaction waves for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. Our main tool is the combination of techniques for viscous conservation laws and the energy method based on micro-macro decomposition of the Boltzmann equation. The expansion nature of the rarefaction waves and the suitable microscopic version of the <i>H</i>-theorem are essential elements of our analysis.

We solve the Fu-Yau equation for arbitrary dimension and arbitrary slope $\alpha'$. Actually we obtain at the same time a solution of the open case $\alpha'>0$, an improved solution of the known case $\alpha'<0$, and solutions for a family of Hessian equations which includes the Fu-Yau equation as a special case. The method is based on the introduction of a more stringent ellipticity condition than the usual $\Gamma_k$ admissible cone condition, and which can be shown to be preserved by precise estimates with scale.

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 weak well-posedness of strong damping wave equations defined by fractal Laplacians is proved by using Galerkin method. These fractal Laplacians are defined by self-similar measures with overlaps, such as the well-known infinite Bernoulli convolution associated with the golden ratio, the three-fold convolution of the Cantor measure, and a class of self-similar measures that we call essentially of finite type. In general, the structure of self-similar measures with overlap are complicated and intractable. However, some important information about the structure of the three measures above can be obtained. We make use of these information to set up a framework for one-dimensional measures to discretize the equations, and use the finite element and central difference methods to obtain numerical approximations of the weak solutions. We also show that the numerical solutions converge to the actual solution and obtain the rate of convergence.

The singular parabolic problem $u_t-\triangle u=\l{\frac{1+\d|\nabla u|^2}{(1-u)^2}}$ on a bounded domain $\O$ of $\Rn$ with Dirichlet boundary condition, models the Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device with fringing field. In this paper, we focus on the quenching behavior of the solution to this equation. We first show that there exists a critical value $\l_\d^*>0$ such that if $0<\l<\l_\d^*$, all solutions exist globally; while for $\l>\l_\d^*$, all the solution will quench in finite time. The estimate of the quenching time in terms of large voltage $\l$ is investigated. Furthermore, the quenching set is a compact subset of $\O$, provided $\O$ is a convex bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$. In particular, if the domain $\O$ is radially symmetric, then the origin is the only quenching point. We not only derive the one-side estimate of the quenching rate, but also further study the refined asymptotic behavior of the finite quenching solution.