A uniform approach is introduced to study the existence of measure valued solutions to the homogeneous Boltzmann equation for both hard potential with finite energy, and soft potential with finite or infinite energy, by using Toscani metric. Under the non-angular cutoff assumption on the cross-section, the solutions obtained are shown to be in the Schwartz space in the velocity variable as long as the initial data is not a single Dirac mass without any extra moment condition for hard potential, and with the boundedness on moments of any order for soft potential.

The approach based on the construction of some nonlinear functionals was proved to be robust in the study of the well-posedness theories of hyperbolic conservation laws, especially in one space dimensional case. In particular, a generalized entropy functional was constructed in [T.-P. Liu, T. Yang, A new entropy functional for scalar conservation laws, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 52 (1999) 14271442] for the L 1 stability of weak solutions. However, this generalized functional is so far only defined for scalar equations with convex flux function. In this paper, we introduce a new nonlinear functional which is motivated by the new Glimm functional introduced in [J.-L. Hua, Z.-H. Jiang, T. Yang, A new Glimm functional and convergence rate of Glimm scheme for general systems of hyperbolic conservation laws, preprint] for general scalar conservation laws. This functional improves the one given in [H.-X. Liu, T. Yang, A

In this paper, we prove two existence results of solutions to mean field equations Δu+e^u=ρδ_0 and Δu=λe^u(e^u−1)+4π\sum_{j=1}^M δ_{p_j} on an arbitrary connected finite graph, where ρ>0 and λ>0 are constants, M is a positive integer, and p_1,…,p_M are arbitrarily chosen distinct vertices on the graph.

We investigate, by numerical simulation, the shear layer instability associated with the outer layer of a spiral vortex formed behind an impulsively started thin ellipse. The unstable free shear layer undergoes a secondary instability. We connect this instability with the dynamics of corner vortices adjacent to the tip of the ellipse by observing that the typical turnover time of the corner vortex matches the period of the unstable mode in the shear layer. We suggest that the corner vortex acts as a signal generator, and produces periodic perturbation which triggers the instability.

A generalized entropy functional was introduced in [T.-P. Liu, T. Yang, A new entropy functional for scalar conservation laws, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 52 (1999) 14271442] for the scalar hyperbolic conservation laws with convex flux function. This functional was crucially used in the functional approach to the L 1 stability study on the system of hyperbolic conservation laws when each characteristic field is either genuinely nonlinear or linearly degenerate. However, how to construct the generalized entropy functional for scalar conservation laws with general flux, and then how to apply the functional approach to the L 1 study on general systems are still open. In this paper, we construct a new nonlinear functional which gives some partial answer to this question and we expect the analysis will shed some light on the future investigation in this direction.