We study a generalized ergodic problem (E), which is a Hamilton-Jacobi equation of contact type, in the flat n-dimensional torus. We first obtain existence of solutions to this problem under quite general assumptions. Various examples are presented and analyzed to show that (E) does not have unique solutions in general. We then study uniqueness structures of solutions to (E) in the convex setting by using the nonlinear adjoint method.

We establish several gradient estimates for second-order divergence type parabolic and elliptic systems. The coefficients and data are assumed to be Hlder or Dini continuous in the time variable and all but one spatial variable. This type of system arises from the problems of linearly elastic laminates and composite materials. For the proof, we use Campanatos approach in a novel way. Non-divergence type equations under similar conditions are also discussed.

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 the vanishing viscosity limit of the compressible NavierStokes equations to the Riemann solution of the Euler equations that consists of the superposition of a shock wave and a rarefaction wave. In particular, it is shown that there exists a family of smooth solutions to the compressible NavierStokes equations that converges to the Riemann solution away from the initial and shock layers at a rate in terms of the viscosity and the heat conductivity coefficients. This gives the first mathematical justification of this limit for the NavierStokes equations to the Riemann solution that contains these two typical nonlinear hyperbolic waves.

For the Boltzmann equation with an external force in the form of the gradient of a potential function in space variable, the stability of its stationary solutions as local Maxwellians was studied by S. Ukai et al. (2005) through the energy method. Based on this stability analysis and some techniques on analyzing the convergence rates to station- ary solutions for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, in this paper, we study the convergence rate to the above stationary solutions for the Boltzmann equation which is a fundamental equation in statistical physics for non-equilibrium rarefied gas. By combining the dissipation from the viscosity and heat conductivity on the fluid components and the dissipation on the non-fluid component through the celebrated H-theorem, a convergence rate of the same order as the one for the compressible Navier-Stokes is obtained by constructing some