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.

In this paper we introduce our preliminary research results for segmentation and labeling of 3-dimensional microscopy neuron image. We segment each of stacked 2-dimensional image slices using a partial differential equation (PDE) based algorithm and project previous slice segmentation result to the next slide as an initialization condition. Then we label neurons using an efficient connected component labeling algorithm. We show sample results obtained from real neuron image data

In this paper, we prove that the celebrated Arnold--Beltrami--Childress (ABC) flow with parameters A=B=C=1, given by $ \dot x =\sin z+\cos y,\ \dot y = \sin x+\cos z,\ \dot z =\sin y + \cos x $, has periodic orbits on (2\pi\mathbb T)^3 with rotation vectors parallel to (1,0,0), (0,1,0), and (0,0,1). Despite ABC flows being studied since the 1960s, this seems to be the first time that existence of nonperturbative periodic orbits has been established for them. The main difficulty here is the lack of a variational structure for these flows, and our proof instead relies on their symmetry properties. As an application of our result, we show that the well-known G-equation model of turbulent combustion with this ABC flow on (2\pi\mathbb T)^3 has a linear (i.e., maximal possible) flame speed enhancement rate as the flow amplitude grows to infinity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time an asymptotic flame speed growth law has been established for a

Although the decay in time estimates of the semi-group generated by the linearized Boltzmann operator without forcing have been well established, there is no corresponding result for the case with general external force. This paper is mainly concerned with the optimal decay estimates on the solution operator in some weighted Sobolev spaces for the linearized Boltzmann equation with a time dependent external force. No time decay assumption is made on the force. The proof is based on both the energy method through the macro-micro decomposition and the L p-L q estimates from the spectral analysis. The decay estimates thus obtained are applied to the study on the global existence of the Cauchy problem to the nonlinear Boltzmann equation with time dependent external force and source. Precisely, for space dimension n>= 3, the global existence and decay rates of solutions to the Cauchy problem are

We study the large-time asymptotic shock-front speed in an inviscid Burgers equation with a spatially random flux function. This equation is a prototype for a class of scalar conservation laws with spatial random coefficients such as the well-known BuckleyLeverett equation for two-phase flows, and the contaminant transport equation in groundwater flows. The initial condition is a shock located at the origin (the indicator function of the negative real line). We first regularize the equation by a special random viscous term so that the resulting equation can be solved explicitly by a ColeHopf formula. Using the invariance principle of the underlying random processes and the Laplace method, we prove that for large times the solutions behave like fronts moving at averaged constant speeds in the sense of distribution. However, the front locations are random, and we show explicitly the probability of observing the