The dynamic stability of vortex solutions to the Ginzburg-Landau and nonlinear Schrdinger equations is the basic assumption of the asymptotic particle plus field description of interacting vortices. For the Ginzburg-Landau dynamics we prove that all vortices are asymptotically nonlinearly stable relative to small radial perturbations. Initially finite energy perturbations of vortices decay to zero in<i>L</i> ^<i>p</i>(²) spaces with an algebraic rate as time tends to infinity. We also prove that under general (nonradial) perturbations, the plus and minus one-vortices are linearly dynamically stable in<i>L</i> ²; the linearized operator has spectrum equal to (, 0] and generates a<i>C</i> ₀ semigroup of contractions on<i>L</i> ²(²). The nature of the zero energy point is clarified; it is<i>resonance</i>, a property related to the infinite energy of planar vortices. Our results on the linearized operator are also used to show that the plus and

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.

. Let $u_t+f(u)_x=0$ be a strictly hyperbolic $n\times n$ system of conservation laws, each characteristic field being linearly degenerate or genuinely nonlinear. In this paper we explicitly define a functional $\Phi=\Phi(u,v)$, equivalent to the $\L^1$ distance, which is almost decreasing i.e., $$ \Phi\big( u(t),~v(t)\big)-\Phi\big( u(s),~v(s)\big)\leq \O(\ve)\cdot (t-s)\quad\hbox{for all}~~t&gt;s\geq 0,$$ for every pair of <i></i>-approximate solutions <i>u</i>, <i>v</i> with small total variation, generated by a wave front tracking algorithm. The small parameter <i></i> here controls the errors in the wave speeds, the maximum size of rarefaction fronts and the total strength of all non-physical waves in <i>u</i> and in <i>v</i>. From the above estimate, it follows that front-tracking approximations converge to a unique limit solution, depending Lipschitz continuously on the initial data, in the ${\vec L}^1$ norm. This provides a new proof of the existence of the

Fluid dynamic limit to compressible Euler equations from compressible Navier-Stokes equations and Boltzmann equation has been an active topic with limited success so far. In this paper, we consider the case when the solution of the Euler equations is a Riemann solution consisting two rarefaction waves and a contact discontinuity and prove this limit for both Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation when the viscosity, heat conductivity coefficients and the Knudsen number tend to zero respectively. In addition, the uniform convergence rates in terms of the above physical parameters are also obtained. It is noted that this is the first rigorous proof of this limit for a Riemann solution with superposition of three waves even though the fluid dynamic limit for a single wave has been proved.

We show that in bounded domains with no-slip boundary conditions, the Navier-Stokes pressure can be determined in a such way that it is strictly dominated by viscosity. As a consequence, in a general domain we can treat the Navier-Stokes equations as a perturbed vector diffusion equation, instead of as a perturbed Stokes system. To illustrate the advantages of this view, we provide a simple proof of the unconditional stability of a difference scheme that is implicit only in viscosity and explicit in both pressure and convection terms, requiring no solution of stationary Stokes systems or inf-sup conditions.