In this paper, we study the decomposition of the Nehari manifold via the combination of concave and convex nonlinearities. Furthermore, we use this result and the LjusternikSchnirelmann category to prove that the existence of multiple positive solutions for a Dirichlet problem involving critical Sobolev exponent.

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.

We prove the existence of global solutions to a coupled system of NavierStokes, and reaction-diffusion equations (for temperature and mass fraction) with prescribed front data on an infinite vertical strip or tube. This system models a one-step exothermic chemical reaction. The heat release induced volume expansion is accounted for via the Boussinesq approximation. The solutions are time dependent moving fronts in the presence of fluid convection. In the general setting, the fronts are subject to intensive Rayleigh-Taylor and thermal-diffusive instabilities. Various physical quantities, such as fluid velocity, temperature, and front speed, can grow in time. We show that the growth is at most for large time <i>t</i> by constructing a nonlinear functional on the temperature and mass fraction components. These results hold for arbitrary order reactions in two space dimensions and for quadratic and cubic reactions in

In this paper, we give a condition on the bicharacteristic which guarantees the global existence of the mild solution to the Boltzmann equation with an external force for the hard-sphere model and potentials with angular cutoff in infinite vacuum. This generalizes the previous results to the case when the force can have arbitrary strength. The constructive condition on the bicharacteristic is used to obtain the pointwise estimates on the collision operator so that the global existence comes from the contraction mapping theorem.

We study the front dynamics of the bistable reaction-diffusion equations with periodic diffusion and/or convection coefficients in several space dimensions. When traveling wave solutions exist, the solutions of the initial value problem behave as wave fronts propagating with the effective speeds of traveling waves under various initial conditions. Yet due to the bistable nature of the nonlinearity, traveling waves may not always exist when the medium variations from the mean states are large enough. Their existence is closely related to the detailed forms of diffusion and convection coefficients, more so in multidimension than in one. We present a simple sufficient condition for the nonexistence of traveling waves (quenching) using perturbation method. Our two dimensional finite difference numerical computations show a variety of front behaviors, such as: the propagation, quenching and retreat of fronts. We found