We consider the Schrödinger equation with a nondispersive logarithmic nonlinearity and a repulsive harmonic potential. For a suitable range of the coefficients, there exist two positive stationary solutions, each one generating a continuous family of solitary waves. These solutions are Gaussian, and turn out to be orbitally unstable. We also discuss the notion of ground state in this setting: for any natural definition, the set of ground states is empty.

We prove the existence of reaction-diffusion traveling fronts in mean zero space-time periodic shear flows for nonnegative reactions including the classical KPP (Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov) nonlinearity. For the KPP nonlinearity, the minimal front speed is characterized by a variational principle involving the principal eigenvalue of a space-time periodic parabolic operator. Analysis of the variational principle shows that adding a mean-zero space time periodic shear flow to an existing mean zero space-periodic shear flow leads to speed enhancement. Computation of KPP minimal speeds is performed based on the variational principle and a spectrally accurate discretization of the principal eigenvalue problem. It shows that the enhancement is monotone decreasing in temporal shear frequency, and that the total enhancement from pure reaction-diffusion obeys quadratic and linear laws at small and large shear amplitudes.

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.

Two nonlinear diffusion equations for thin film epitaxy, with or without slope selection, are studied in this work. The nonlinearity models the Ehrlich–Schwoebel effect – the kinetic asymmetry in attachment and detachment of adatoms to and from terrace boundaries. Both perturbation analysis and numerical simulation are presented to show that such an atomistic effect is the origin of a nonlinear morphological instability, in a rough-smooth-rough pattern, that has been experimentally observed as transient in an early stage of epitaxial growth on rough surfaces. Initial-boundary-value problems for both equations are proven to be well-posed, and the solution regularity is also obtained. Galerkin spectral approximations are studied to provide both a priori bounds for proving the well-posedness and numerical schemes for simulation. Numerical results are presented to confirm part of the analysis and to explore the difference between the two models on coarsening dynamics.

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.