Given an acyclic representation  of the fundamental group of a compact oriented odd-dimensional manifold, which is close enough to an acyclic unitary representation, we define a refinement T of the Ray-Singer torsion associated to , which can be viewed as the analytic counterpart of the refined combinatorial torsion introduced by Turaev. T is equal to the graded determinant of the odd signature operator up to a correction term, the metric anomaly, needed to make it independent of the choice of the Riemannian metric.T is a holomorphic function on the space of such representations of the fundamental group. When  is a unitary representation, the absolute value of T is equal to the Ray-Singer torsion and the phase of T is proportional to the -invariant of the odd signature operator. The fact that the Ray-Singer torsion and the-invariant can be combined into one holomorphic function allows one to use methods of complex analysis to study both invariants. In particular, using these methods we compute the quotient of the refined analytic torsion and Turaev’s refinement of the combinatorial torsion generalizing in this way the classical Cheeger-M¨uller theorem. As an application, we extend and improve a result of Farber about the relationship between the Farber-Turaev absolute torsion and the -invariant. As part of our construction of T we prove several new results about determinants and -invariants of non self-adjoint elliptic operators.

Wave propagation problems arise in a wide range of applications. The energy conserving property is one of the guiding principles for numerical algorithms, in order to minimize the phase or shape errors after long time integration. In this paper, we develop and analyze a local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method for solving the wave equation. We prove optimal error estimates, superconvergence toward a particular projection of the exact solution, and the energy conserving property for the semi-discrete formulation. The analysis is extended to the fully discrete LDG scheme, with the centered second-order time discretization (the leap-frog scheme). Our numerical experiments demonstrate optimal rates of convergence and superconvergence. We also show that the shape of the solution, after long time integration, is well preserved due to the energy conserving property.

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We prove that there is a unique way to construct a geometric scale of Hilbert spaces interpolating between two given spaces. We investigate what properties of operators, other than boundedness, are preserved by interpolation. We show that self-adjointness is, but subnormality and Krein subnormality are not. On the way to this last result, we establish a representation theorem for cyclic Krein subnormal operators.

The entropy is one of the fundamental states of a fluid and, in the viscous case, the equation that it satisfies is highly singular in the region close to the vacuum. In spite of its importance in the gas dynamics, the mathematical analyses on the behavior of the entropy near the vacuum region, were rarely carried out; in particular, in the presence of vacuum, either at the far field or at some isolated interior points, it was unknown whether the entropy remains its boundedness. The results obtained in this paper indicate that the ideal gases retain their uniform boundedness of the entropy, locally or globally in time, if the vacuum occurs at the far field only and the density decays slowly enough at the far field. Precisely, we consider the Cauchy problem to the one-dimensional full compressible Navier-Stokes equations without heat conduction, and establish the local and global existence and uniqueness of entropy-bounded solutions, in the presence of vacuum at the far field only. It is also shown that, different from the case that with compactly supported initial density, the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, with slowly decaying initial density, can propagate the regularities in inhomogeneous Sobolev spaces.