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We consider the vorticity-stream formulation of axisymmetric incompressible ows and its equivalence with the primitive formulation. It is shown that, to characterize the regularity of a divergence free axisymmetric vector eld in terms of the swirling components, an extra set of pole condition is necessary to give a full description of the regularity. In addition, smooth solutions up to the axis of rotation gives rise to smooth solutions of primitive formulation in the case of Navier-Stokes equations, but not the Euler equations. We also establish proper weak formulations and show its equivalence to Leray's solutions.

We establish the variational principle of Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov (KPP) front speeds in temporally random shear flows with sufficiently decaying correlations. A key quantity in the variational principle is the almost sure Lyapunov exponent of a heat operator with random potential. To prove the variational principle, we use the comparison principle of solutions, the path integral representation of solutions, and large deviation estimates of the associated stochastic flows. The variational principle then allows us to analytically bound the front speeds. The speed bounds imply the linear growth law in the regime of large root mean square shear amplitude at any fixed temporal correlation length, and the sublinear growth law if the temporal decorrelation is also large enough, the so-called bending phenomenon.

In this paper, we consider the Boltzmann equation with soft potentials and prove the stability of a class of non-trivial profiles defined as some given local Maxwellians. The method consists of the analytic techniques for viscous conservation laws, properties of Burnett functions and energy method through the micro-macro decomposition of the Boltzmann equation. In particular, one of the key observations is a detailed analysis of the Burnett functions so that the energy estimates can be obtained in a clear way. As an application of the main results in this paper, we prove the large time nonlinear asymptotic stability of rarefaction waves to the Boltzmann equation with soft potentials.

We establish the solvability of second order divergence-type parabolic systems in Sobolev spaces. The leading coefficients are assumed to be merely measurable in one spatial direction on each small parabolic cylinder with the spatial direction allowed to depend on the cylinder. In the other orthogonal directions and the time variable, the coefficients have locally small mean oscillations. We also obtain the corresponding $W^1_p$-solvability of second order elliptic systems in divergence form. This type of system arises from the problems of linearly elastic laminates and composite materials. Our results are new even for scalar equations, and the proofs differ from and simplify the methods used previously in [H. Dong and D. Kim, <i>Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.</i>, 196 (2010), pp. 2570]. As an application, we improve a result by Chipot, Kinderlehrer, and Vergara-Caffarelli [<i>Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.</i>, 96 (1986), pp. 8196] on