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We consider two-dimensional critical bond percolation. Conditioned on the existence of an open circuit in an annulus, we show that the ratio of the expected size of the shortest open circuit to the expected size of the innermost circuit tends to zero as the side length of the annulus tends to infinity, the aspect ratio remaining fixed. The same proof yields a similar result for the lowest open crossing of a rectangle. In this last case, we answer a question of Kesten and Zhang by showing in addition that the ratio of the length of the shortest crossing to the length of the lowest tends to zero in probability. This suggests that the chemical distance in critical percolation is given by an exponent strictly smaller than that of the lowest path.

Nonlinear hyperbolic systems with relaxations may encounter different scales of relaxation time, which is a prototype multiscale phenomenon that arises in many applications. In such a problem the relaxation time is of O(1) in part of the domain and very small in the remaining domain in which the solution can be approximated by the zero relaxation limit which can be solved numerically much more efficiently. For the Jin–Xin relaxation system in such a two-scale setting, we establish its wellposedness and singular limit as the (smaller) relaxation time goes to zero. The limit is a multiscale coupling problem which couples the original Jin–Xin system on the domain when the relaxation time is O(1) with its relaxation limit in the other domain through interface conditions which can be derived by matched interface layer analysis.As a result, we also establish the well-posedness and regularity (such as boundedness in sup norm with bounded total variation and L 1-contraction) of the coupling problem, thus providing a rigorous mathematical foundation, in the general nonlinear setting, to the multiscale domain decomposition method for this two-scale problem originally proposed in Jin et al. in Math. Comp. 82, 749–779, 2013.

We give an error estimate for the energy and helicity preserving scheme (EHPS) in second order finite difference setting on axisymmetric incompressible flows with swirling velocity. This is accomplished by a weighted energy estimate, along with careful and nonstandard local truncation error analysis near the geometric singularity and a far field decay estimate for the stream function. A key ingredient in our a priori estimate is the permutation identities associated with the Jacobians, which are also a unique feature that distinguishes EHPS from standard finite difference schemes.

In this paper, we consider the Cauchy problem to the heat conductive compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the presence of vacuum and with vacuum far field. Global well-posedness of strong solutions is established under the assumption, among some other regularity and compatibility conditions, that the scaling invariant quantity $\|\rho_0\|_\infty(\|\rho_0\|_3+\|\rho_0\|_\infty^2\|\sqrt{\rho_0}u_0\|_2^2)(\|\nabla u_0\|_2^2+ \|\rho_0\|_\infty\|\sqrt{\rho_0}E_0\|_2^2)$ is sufficiently small, with the smallness depending only on the parameters $R, \gamma, \mu, \lambda,$ and $\kappa$ in the system. Notably, the smallness assumption is imposed on the above scaling invariant quantity exclusively, and it is independent of any norms of the initial data, which is different from the existing papers, see, e.g., \cite{HLX12,HUANGLI11,WENZHU17}. The total mass can be either finite or infinite. A new equation for the density, more precisely for the cubic of the density, derived from combing the continuity and momentum equations, is employed to get the $L^\infty_t(L^3)$ type estimate of the density.