For the physical vacuum free boundary problem with the sound speed being C 1/2 - H¨older continuous near vacuum boundaries of the compressible Euler equations with damping, the global existence of solutions and convergence to Barenblatt self-similar solutions of the porous media equation was recently proved in [34] for 1-d motions by Luo and the author. This paper generalizes the results for 1-d motions to 3-d spherically symmetric motions. Compared with the 1-d theory, besides the high degeneracy of the equations near the physical vacuum boundary, the analytical difficulties lie in the complexity of equations and the coordinates singularity in the center of symmetry which is resolved by constructing suitable weights. The results obtained in this work contribute to the theory of global solutions to free boundary problems of compressible inviscid fluids in the presence of vacuum states, for which the currently available results are mainly for the local-in-time well-posedness theory, also to the theory of global smooth solutions of dissipative hyperbolic systems which fail to be strictly hyperbolic.

This paper is concerned with the classical motion of a string in global AdS3. The initially static string stretches between two antipodal points on the boundary circle. Both endpoints are perturbed which creates cusps at a steady rate. The cusps propagate towards the interior where they collide. The behavior of the string depends on the strength of forcing. Three qualitatively different phases can be distinguished: transparent, gray, and black. The transparent region is analogous to a standing wave. In the black phase, there is a horizon on the worldsheet and cusps never reach the other endpoint. The string keeps folding and its length grows linearly over time. In the gray phase, the string still grows linearly. However, cusps do cross to the other side. The transparent and gray regions are separated by a transition point where a logarithmic accumulation of cusps is numerically observed. A simple model reproduces the qualitative behavior of the string in the three phases.

Segmented strings in flat space are piecewise linear classical string solutions. Kinks between the segments move with the speed of light and their worldlines form a lattice on the worldsheet. This idea can be generalized to AdS3 where the embedding is built from AdS2 patches. The construction provides an exact discretization of the non-linear string equations of motion. This paper computes the area of segmented strings using cross-ratios constructed from the kink vectors. The cross-ratios can be expressed in terms of either left-handed or right-handed variables. The string equation of motion in AdS3 is reduced to that of an integrable time-discretized relativistic Toda-type lattice. Positive solutions yield string embeddings that are unique up to global transformations. In the appendix, the Poincare target space energy is computed by integrating the worldsheet current along kink worldlines and a formula is derived for the integrated scalar curvature of the embedding.

We study evolutionary games on graphs. The individuals of a population occupy the vertices of the graph and interact with their neighbors to receive payoff. We consider finite population size, regular graphs, probabilistic death-birth updating and weak selection. There are two types of strategies, A and B, and a payoff matrix [(a, b),(c, d)]. The initial condition is given by an arbitrary configuration where each vertex is occupied by either A or B. The conjugate initial condition is obtained by swapping A and B. We ask: when is the fixation probability of A for the original configuration greater than the fixation probability of B for the conjugate configuration? The answer is a linear condition of the form σa+b > c+σd. We calculate σ for any initial condition. For large population size we obtain the well known result σ = (k + 1)/(k − 1), but now this result extends to any mixed initial condition. As a specific example we study evolution of cooperation. We calculate the critical benefit-to-cost ratio for natural selection to favor the fixation of cooperators for any initial condition. We obtain results that specify which initial conditions reduce and which initial conditions increase the critical benefit-to-cost ratio. Adding more cooperators to the initial condition does not necessarily favor cooperation. But strategic placing of cooperators in a network can enhance the takeover of cooperation.

A compactness framework is established for approximate solutions to subsonicsonic flows governed by the steady full Euler equations for compressible fluids in arbitrary dimension. The existing compactness frameworks for the two-dimensional irrotational case do not directly apply for the steady full Euler equations in higher dimensions. The new compactness framework we develop applies for both non-homentropic and rotational flows. One of our main observations is that the compactness can be achieved by using only natural weak estimates for the mass balance and the vorticity, along with the Bernoulli law and the entropy relation, through a more delicate analysis on the phase space. As direct applications, we establish two existence theorems for multidimensional subsonic-sonic full Euler flows through infinitely long nozzles.