Variational principle of Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov (KPP) minimal front speeds provides a fast and accurate way for speed calculations. A variational principle based computation is carried out on a large ensemble of KPP random speeds through spatial, mean zero, stationary, Gaussian random shear flows inside two dimensional channel domains. In the regime of small root mean square (rms) shear amplitude, the enhancement of the ensemble averaged KPP front speed obeys the quadratic law. In the large rms amplitude regime, the enhancement follows the linear law. An asymptotic ensemble averaged speed formula is derived and agrees well with the numerics. Related theoretical results are presented with a brief outline of the ideas in the proofs. The ensemble averaged speed is found to increase sublinearly with enlarging channel widths, while the speed variance decreases. Direct simulations in the

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We study waves in convex scalar conservation laws under noisy initial perturbations. It is known that the building blocks of these waves are shock and rarefaction waves, both are invariant under hyperbolic scaling. Noisy perturbations can generate complicated wave patterns, such as diffusion process of shock locations. However we show that under the hyperbolic scaling, the solutions converge in the sense of distribution to the unperturbed waves. In particular, randomly perturbed shock waves move at the unperturbed velocity in the scaling limit. Analysis makes use of the Hopf formula of the related Hamilton-Jacobi equation and regularity estimates of noisy processes.

We establish global regularity for weak solutions to quasilinear divergence form elliptic and parabolic equations over Lipschitz domains with controlled growth conditions on low order terms. The leading coefficients belong to the class of BMO functions with small mean oscillations with respect to <i>x</i>.

The aim of this paper is to develop a mathematical framework for opto-elastography. In opto-elastography, a mechanical perturbation of the medium produces a decorrelation of optical speckle patterns due to the displacements of optical scatterers. To model this, we consider two optically random media, with the second medium obtained by shifting the first medium in some local region. We derive the radiative transfer equation for the cross-correlation of the wave fields in the media. Then we derive its diffusion approximation. In both the radiative transfer and the diffusion regimes, we relate the correlation of speckle patterns to the solutions of the radiative transfer and the diffusion equations. We present numerical simulations based on our model which are in agreement with recent experimental measurements.