We study the well-posedness theory for the MHD boundary layer. The boundary layer equations are governed by the Prandtl-type equations that are derived from the incompressible MHD system with non-slip boundary condition on the velocity and perfectly conducting condition on the magnetic field. Under the assumption that the initial tangential magnetic field is not zero, we establish the local-in time existence, uniqueness of solutions for the nonlinear MHD boundary layer equations. Compared with the well-posedness theory of the classical Prandtl equations for which the monotonicity condition of the tangential velocity plays a crucial role, this monotonicity condition is not needed for the MHD boundary layer. This justifies the physical understanding that the magnetic field has a stabilizing effect on MHD boundary layer in rigorous mathematics.

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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.

In this paper, we study existence of global entropy weak solutions to a critical-case unstable thin lm equation in one-dimensional case ht + @x(h n @xxxh) + @x(h n+2@xh) = 0; where n  1. There exists a critical mass Mc = 2 p 6 3 found by Witelski etal. (2004 Euro. J. of Appl. Math. 15, 223{256) for n = 1. We obtain global existence of a non-negative entropy weak solution if initial mass is less than Mc. For n  4, entropy weak solutions are positive and unique. For n = 1,a nite time blow-up occurs for solutions with initial mass larger than Mc.For the Cauchy problem with n = 1 and initial mass less than Mc, we show that at least one of the following long-time behavior holds: the second moment goes to innity as the time goes to innity or h(
; tk) * 0 in L1 (R) for some subsequence tk ! 1.

Let F :RN→RN be a locally Lipschitz continuous function. We prove that F is a global homeomorphism or only injective, under suitable assumptions on the subdifferential ∂F(x). We use variational methods, nonsmooth inverse function theorem and extensions of the Hadamard-Levy Theorem. We also address questions on the Markus-Yamabe conjecture.