Given a family of nodal curves, a semistable modification of it is another family made up of curves obtained by inserting chains of rational curves of any given length at certain nodes of certain curves of the original family. We give comparison theorems between torsion-free, rank-1 sheaves in the former family and invertible sheaves in the latter. We apply them to show that there are functorial isomorphisms between the compactifications of relative Jacobians of families of nodal curves constructed through Caporaso’s approach and those constructed through Pandharipande’s approach.

In this paper, we study the full regularity and well-posedness of classical solutions to the nonlinear unsteady Prandtl equations with Robin or Dirichlet boundary condition in half space. Under Oleinik’s monotonicity assumption, we prove the large time existence of classical solutions to the nonlinear Prandtl equations with Robin or Dirichlet boundary condition, when both initial vorticity and the general Euler flow are sufficiently small. For the general Euler flow, the vertical velocity of the Prandtl flow is unbounded. We prove that the Prandtl solutions preserve the full regularities in our solution spaces. The uniqueness and stability are also proved in the weighted Sobolev spaces.

Simulating complex processes in fractured media requires some type of model reduction. Well-known approaches include multi-continuum techniques, which have been commonly used in approximating subgrid effects for flow and transport in fractured media. Our goal in this paper is to (1) show a relation between multi-continuum approaches and Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM) and (2) to discuss coupling these approaches for solving problems in complex multiscale fractured media. The GMsFEM, a systematic approach, constructs multiscale basis functions via local spectral decomposition in pre-computed snapshot spaces. We show that GMsFEM can automatically identify separate fracture networks via local spectral problems. We discuss the relation between these basis functions and continuums in multi-continuum methods. The GMsFEM can automatically detect each

In this paper we investigate staggered discontinuous Galerkin method for the Helmholtz equation with large wave number on general quadrilateral and polygonal meshes. The method is highly flexible by allowing rough grids such as the trapezoidal grids and highly distorted grids, and at the same time, is numerical flux free. Furthermore, it allows hanging nodes, which can be simply treated as additional vertices. By exploiting a modified duality argument, the stability and convergence can be proved under the condition that \kappa h is sufficiently small, where \kappa h is the wave number and \kappa h is the mesh size. Error estimates for both the scalar and vector variables in \kappa h norm are established. Several numerical experiments are tested to verify our theoretical results and to present the capability of our method for capturing singular solutions.

Portfolio allocation with gross-exposure constraint is an effective method to increase the efficiency and stability of portfolios selection among a vast pool of assets, as demonstrated by Fan, Zhang, and Yu. The required high-dimensional volatility matrix can be estimated by using high-frequency financial data. This enables us to better adapt to the local volatilities and local correlations among a vast number of assets and to increase significantly the sample size for estimating the volatility matrix. This article studies the volatility matrix estimation using high-dimensional, high-frequency data from the perspective of portfolio selection. Specifically, we propose the use of pairwise-refresh time and all-refresh time methods based on the concept of refresh time proposed by Barndorff-Nielsen, Hansen, Lunde, and Shephard for the estimation of vast covariance matrix and compare their merits in the portfolio selection. We