The solvability in Sobolev spaces is proved for divergence form complex-valued higher order parabolic systems in the whole space, on a half-space, and on a Reifenberg flat domain. The leading coefficients are assumed to be merely measurable in one spacial direction and have small mean oscillations in the orthogonal directions on each small cylinder. The directions in which the coefficients are only measurable vary depending on each cylinder. The corresponding elliptic problem is also considered.

We study the critical and super-critical dissipative quasi-geostrophic equations in $\bR^ 2$ or $\bT^ 2$. Higher regularity of mild solutions with arbitrary initial data in H^{2-} is proved. As a corollary, we obtain a global existence result for the critical 2D quasi-geostrophic equations with periodic H^{2-} data. Some decay in time estimates are also provided.

We study the critical dissipative quasi-geostrophic equations in $\bR^ 2$ with arbitrary H^ 1 initial data. After showing certain decay estimate, a global well-posedness result is proved by adapting the method in [11] with a suitable modification. A decay in time estimate for higher order homogeneous Sobolev norms of solutions is also discussed.

As a typical example of hyperbolic conservation laws, the system of Euler equations representing the conservation of mass, momentum and energy has three basic wave patterns. They are two nonlinear waves called shock and rarefaction wave, and one linearly degenerate wave called contact discontinuity. These basic wave patterns have their counterparts both in other physical models for gas motions in equilibrium involving viscosity and heat conductivity, and gas motion in non-equilibrium. The stability of these basic wave patterns in the system of Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation has been an active research topic. Even though the stability of the two nonlinear wave patterns has been extensively studied, the stability of the linearly degenerate contact wave was not solved until recently. In this paper, we will briefly present our recent results in [32] on the stability of the contact wave patterns for both the Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation.

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