We consider compact submanifolds of dimension n  2 in Rn+k, with nonzero mean curvature vector everywhere, and such that the full norm of the second fundamental form is bounded by a fixed multiple (depending on n) of the length of the mean curvature vector at every point. We prove that the mean curvature flow deforms such a submanifold to a point in finite time, and that the solution is asymptotic to a shrinking sphere in some (n + 1)- dimensional affine subspace of Rn+k.

We compute the one-loop effective action of two D0-branes in the matrix model for a cosmological background, and find vanishing static potential. However, there is a non-vanishing v2 term not predicted in a supergravity calculation. This term is complex and signals an instability of the two D0-brane system, it may also indicate that the matrix model is incorrect.

This paper concerns the well-posedness theory of the motion of a physical vacuum for the compressible Euler equations with or without self-gravitation. First, a general uniqueness theorem of classical solutions is proved for the three dimensional general motion. Second, for the spherically symmetric motions, without imposing the compatibility condition of the first derivative being zero at the center of symmetry, a new local-in-time existence theory is established in a functional space involving less derivatives than those constructed for three-dimensional motions in (Coutand et al., Commun Math Phys 296:559–587, 2010; Coutand and Shkoller, Arch Ration Mech Anal 206:515–616, 2012; Jang andMasmoudi,Well-posedness of compressible Euler equations in a physical vacuum, 2008) by constructing suitable weights and cutoff functions featuring the behavior of solutions near both the center of the symmetry and the moving vacuum boundary.

We consider the numerical solution of the time-fractional diffusion-wave equation on two-dimensional and three-dimensional unbounded spatial domains. Introduce an artificial boundary and find the exact and approximate artificial boundary conditions for the given problem, which lead to a bounded computational domain. Using the exact or approximating boundary conditions on the artificial boundary, the original problem is reduced to an initial-boundary-value problem on the bounded computational domain which is respectively equivalent to or approximates the original problem. Finite difference methods are used to solve the reduced problems on the bounded computational domain and the stability of these finite difference methods are proved. The numerical results demonstrate that the method given in this paper is effective and feasible.

We prove the BMV (Bessis, Moussa, Villani, [1]) conjecture, which states that the function $${t \mapsto \mathop{\rm Tr}\exp(A-tB)}$$ , $${t \geqslant 0}$$ , is the Laplace transform of a positive measure on [0,∞) if$A$and$B$are $${n \times n}$$ Hermitian matrices and$B$is positive semidefinite. A semi-explicit representation for this measure is given.