The contact discontinuity is one of the basic wave patterns in gas motions. The stability of contact discontinuities with general perturbations for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation is a long standing open problem. General perturbations of a contact discontinuity may generate diffusion waves which evolve and interact with the contact wave to cause analytic difficulties. In this paper, we succeed in obtaining the large time asymptotic stability of a contact wave pattern with a convergence rate for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation in a uniform way. One of the key observations is that even though the energy norm of the deviation of the solution from the contact wave may grow at the rate (1+ t) 1 4, it can be compensated by the decay in the energy norm of the derivatives of the deviation which is of the order of (1+ t) 1 4. Thus, this reciprocal order of decay rates for the time

We consider an elliptic pseudo-differential equation with a highly oscillating linear potential modeled as a stationary ergodic random field. The random field is a function composed with a centered long-range correlated Gaussian process. In the limiting of vanishing correlation length, the heterogeneous solution converges to a deterministic solution obtained by averaging the random potential. We characterize the deterministic and stochastic correctors. With proper rescaling, the mean-zero stochastic corrector converges to a Gaussian random process in probability and weakly in the spatial variables. In addition, for two prototype equations involving the Laplacian and the fractional Laplacian operators, we prove that the limit holds in distribution in some Hilbert spaces. We also determine the size of the deterministic corrector when it is larger than the stochastic corrector. Depending on the correlation structure of the random field and on the singularities of the Green’s function, we show that either the deterministic or the random part of the corrector dominates.

In this paper, we derive apriori estimates for constant scalar curvature K\"ahler metrics on a compact K\"ahler manifold. We show that higher order derivatives can be estimated in terms of a $C^0$ bound for the K\"ahler potential. We also discuss some local versions of these estimates which can be of independent interest.

The existence of topological solutions for the Chern-Simons equation with two Higgs particles has been proved by Lin, Ponce and Yang [16]. However, both the uniqueness problem and the existence of non-topological solutions have been left open. In this paper, we consider the case of one vortex at origin. Among others, we prove the uniqueness of topological solutions and give a complete study of the radial solutions, in particular, the existence of some non-topological solutions

The first part of this paper describes some important underlying themes in the mathematical theory of continuum mechanics that are distinct from formulating and analyzing governing equations. The main part of this paper is devoted to a survey of some concrete, conceptually simple, pretty problems that help illuminate the underlying themes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the crucial role of invariant constitutive equations in computation.