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 revisit the homogenization problem for the Poisson equation in periodically perforated domains with zero Neumann data at the boundary of the holes and prescribed Dirichlet data at the outer boundary. It is known that, if the periodicity of the holes goes to zero but their volume fraction remains fixed and positive, the limit problem is a Dirichlet boundary value problem posed in the domain without the holes, and the effective diffusion coefficients are non-trivially modified; if that volume fraction goes to zero instead, i.e. the holes are dilute, the effective operator remains the Laplacian (that is, unmodified). Our main results contain the study of a "continuity" in those effective models with respect to the volume fraction of the holes and some new convergence rates for homogenization in the dilute setting. Our method explores the classical two-scale expansion ansatz and relies on asymptotic analysis of the rescaled cell problems using layer potential theory.

We study a biodegradation model for the time evolution of concentrations of contaminant, nutrient, and bacteria. The bacteria has a natural concentration which will increase when the nutrient reaches the substrate (contaminant). The growth utilizes nutrients and degrades the substrate. Eventually, such a process removes all the substrate and can be described by traveling wave solutions. The model consists of advection-reaction-diffusion equations for the substrate and nutrient concentrations and a rate equation (ODE) for the bacteria concentration. We first show the existence of approximate traveling wave solutions to an elliptically regularized system posed on a finite domain using degree theory and the elliptic maximum principle. To prove that the approximate solutions do not converge to trivial solutions, we construct comparison functions for each component and employ integral identities of the governing

In this paper, we establish the optimal error estimate of the particle method for a family of nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equations, or the so-called b-equation. The b-equation, including the Camassa-Holm equation and the Degasperis-Procesi equation, has many applications in diverse scientific fields. The particle method is an approximation of the b-equation in Lagrangian representation. We also prove short-time existence, uniqueness and regularity of the Lagrangian representation of the b-equation.

The nonlinear stability in the {L^p} -norm, p ≥ 1 , of stationary weak discrete shocks for the Lax-Friedrichs scheme approximating general m × m systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws is proved, provided that the summations of the initial perturbations equal zero. The result is proved by using both a weighted estimate and characteristic energy method based on the internal structures of the discrete shocks and the essential monotonicity of the Lax-Friedrichs scheme.