In this paper, we investigate the initial-boundary value problem to the heat conductive compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Local existence and uniqueness of strong solutions is established with any such initial data that the initial density $\rho_0$, velocity $u_0$, and temperature $\theta_0$ satisfy $\rho_0\in W^{1,q}$, with $q\in(3,6)$, $u_0\in H^1$, and $\sqrt{\rho_0}\theta_0\in L^2$. The initial density is assumed to be only nonnegative and thus the initial vacuum is allowed. In addition to the necessary regularity assumptions, we do not require any initial compatibility conditions such as those proposed in (Y. Cho and H. Kim, \emph{Existence results for viscous polytropic fluids with vacuum}, J. Differential Equations {\bf 228} (2006), no.~2, 377--411.), which although are widely used in many previous works but put some inconvenient constraints on the initial data. Due to the weaker regularities of the initial data and the absence of the initial compatibility conditions, leading to weaker regularities of the solutions compared with those in the previous works, the uniqueness of solutions obtained in the current paper does not follow from the arguments used in the existing literatures. Our proof of the uniqueness of solutions is based on the following new idea of two-stages argument: (i) showing that the difference of two solutions (or part of their components) with the same initial data is controlled by some power function of the time variable; (ii) carrying out some singular-in-time weighted energy differential inequalities fulfilling the structure of the Gr\"onwall inequality. The existence is established in the Euler coordinates, while the uniqueness is proved in the Lagrangian coordinates first and then transformed back to the Euler coordinates.

In this paper we prove the following long-standing conjecture: stable solutions to semi-linear elliptic equations are bounded (and thus smooth) in dimension n⩽9. This result, that was only known to be true for n⩽4, is optimal: log(1/|x|^2) is a W^{1,2} singular stable solution for n⩾10. The proof of this conjecture is a consequence of a new universal estimate: we prove that, in dimension n⩽9, stable solutions are bounded in terms only of their L^1 norm, independently of the non-linearity. In addition, in every dimension we establish a higher integrability result for the gradient and optimal integrability results for the solution in Morrey spaces. As one can see by a series of classical examples, all our results are sharp. Furthermore, as a corollary, we obtain that extremal solutions of Gelfand problems are W^{1,2} in every dimension and they are smooth in dimension n⩽9. This answers to two famous open problems posed by Brezis and Brezis–Vázquez.

A novel discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is developed to solve timedependent bi-harmonic type equations involving fourth derivatives in one and multiple space dimensions. We present the spatial DG discretization based on a mixed formulation and central interface numerical fluxes so that the resulting semi-discrete schemes are L^2 stable even without interior penalty. For time discretization, we use Crank–Nicolson so that the resulting scheme is unconditionally stable and second order in time. We present the optimal L^2 error estimate of O(h^{k+1}) for polynomials of degree k for semi-discrete DG schemes, and the L2 error of O(h^{k+1} + (\Delta t)^2) for fully discrete DG schemes. Extensions to more general fourth order partial differential equations and cases with non-homogeneous boundary conditions are provided. Numerical results are presented to verify the stability and accuracy of the schemes. Finally, an application to the one-dimensional Swift–Hohenberg equation endowed with a decay free energy is presented.

This is a continuation of the paper [15] on nonlinear boundary layers of the Boltzmann equation where the existence is established and shown to be strongly dependent on the Mach number <i>M</i> ^<i></i> of the Maxwellian state at far field. In this paper, when <i>M</i> ^<i></i>&lt;1, we will show that the linearized operator has the exponential decay in time property and therefore a bootstrapping argument yields nonlinear stability of the boundary layers.

We look for bounded periodic solutions for a parametric fractional problem involving a continuous nonlinearity with subcritical growth. By using a variant of Caffarelli and Silvestre extension method adapted to the periodic case and variational tools we prove the existence of at least three bounded periodic solutions when the parameter varies in an appropriate range.