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In this paper we prove that the second (non-trivial) Neumann eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on smooth domains of RN with prescribed measure m attains its maximum on the union of two disjoint balls of measure m/2. As a consequence, the Pólya conjecture for the Neumann eigenvalues holds for the second eigenvalue and for arbitrary domains. We moreover prove that a relaxed form of the same inequality holds in the context of non-smooth domains and densities.

This paper is devoted to a functional analytic approach to the subelliptic oblique derivative problem for the usual Laplacian with a complex parameter λ. We solve the long-standing open problem of the asymptotic eigenvalue distribution for the homogeneous oblique derivative problem when |λ| tends to ∞. We prove the spectral properties of the closed realization of the Laplacian similar to the elliptic (non-degenerate) case. In the proof we make use of Boutet de Monvel calculus in order to study the resolvents and their adjoints in the framework of L2 Sobolev spaces.

The main purpose of the present paper is to investigate the nonlinear stability of viscous shock waves and rarefaction waves for the bipolar VlasovPoissonBoltzmann (VPB) system. To this end, motivated by the micromacro decomposition to the Boltzmann equation in Liu and Yu (Commun Math Phys 246:133179, 2004) and Liu etal. (Physica D 188:178192, 2004), we first set up a new micromacro decomposition around the local Maxwellian related to the bipolar VPB system and give a unified framework to study the nonlinear stability of the basic wave patterns to the system. Then, as applications of this new decomposition, the time-asymptotic stability of the two typical nonlinear wave patterns, viscous shock waves and rarefaction waves are proved for the 1D bipolar VPB system. More precisely, it is first proved that the linear superposition of two Boltzmann shock profiles in the first and third

In this paper, we establish the existence theory for general system of hyperbolic conservation laws and obtain the uniform <i>L</i> _<i>1</i> boundness for the solutions. The existence theory generalizes the classical Glimm theory for systems, for which each characteristic field is either genuinely nonlinear or linearly degenerate in the sense of Lax. We construct the solutions by the Glimm scheme through the wave tracing method. One of the key elements is a new way of measuring the potential interaction of the waves of the same characteristic family involving the angle between waves. A new analysis is introduced to verify the consistency of the wave tracing procedure. The entropy functional is used to study the <i>L</i> _<i>1</i> boundedness.