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.

In this paper, we study the multiplicity of positive solutions for the nonhomogeneous elliptic problem: u+ u= f (x) u p 1+ h (x) in R N. We will show how the shape of the graph of f (x) affects the number of positive solutions.

Motivated by the paper Grard-Varet and Dormy (2010) [6] [JAMS, 2010] about the linear ill-posedness for the Prandtl equations around a shear flow with exponential decay in normal variable, and the recent study of well-posedness on the Prandtl equations in Sobolev spaces, this paper aims to extend the result in [6] to the case when the shear flow has general decay. The key observation is to construct an approximate solution that captures the initial layer to the linearized problem motivated by the precise formulation of solutions to the inviscid Prandtl equations.

The global well-posedness of the Boltzmann equation with initial data of large amplitude has remained a long-standing open problem. In this paper, by developing a new L x L v 1 L x , v approach, we prove the global existence and uniqueness of mild solutions to the Boltzmann equation in the whole space or torus for a class of initial data with bounded velocity-weighted L x L v 1 L x , v norm under some smallness condition on the L x L v 1 L x , v norm as well as defect mass, energy and entropy so that the initial data allow large amplitude oscillations. Both the hard and soft potentials with angular cut-off are considered, and the large time behavior of solutions in the L x L v 1 L x , v norm with explicit rates of convergence are also studied.

We study a continuum model for epitaxial growth of thin films in which the slope of mound structure of film surface increases. This model is a diffusion equation for the surface height profile h which is assumed to satisfy the periodic boundary condition. The equation happens to possess a Liapunov or �free-energy� functional. This functional consists of the term |? h|2, which represents the surface diffusion, and - log (1 + |? h|2), which describes the effect of kinetic asymmetry in the adatom attachment-detachment. We first prove for large time t that the interface width---the standard deviation of the height profile---is bounded above by O(t1/2), the averaged gradient is bounded above by O(t1/4), and the averaged energy is bounded below by O(- log t). We then consider a small coefficient e2 of |? h|2 with e = 1/L and L the linear size of the underlying system, and study the energy asymptotics in the large system limit e ? 0. We show that global minimizers of the free-energy functional exist for each e>0, the L2-norm of the gradient of any global minimizer scales as O(1/e), and the global minimum energy scales as O( log e). The existence of global energy minimizers and a scaling argument are used to construct a sequence of equilibrium solutions with different wavelengths. Finally, we apply our minimum energy estimates to derive bounds in terms of the linear system size L for the saturation interface width and the corresponding saturation time.