Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Singularities are ubiquitous in nonlinear PDEs. They appear in the form of sharp interfaces, vortices, spikes, finite or infinite time blowup, etc. The long-term goal of my research program is to develop unified methods to study singularity formations in a diverse range of problems. The mathematical tools will include gluing methods (finite or infinite dimensional), nonlinear analysis, geometric and variational methods. The proposed research consists of five overlapping themes: I (De Giorgi Conjecture): Continue the study of De Giorgi conjectures for the Allen-Cahn (AC) equation. After the classification of monotone solutions, it is natural to classify global minimizers or stable or finite Morse index solutions. Then we use it to study De Giorgi type conjectures for Lane-Emden equations. We are also interested in the applications of AC to the constructions of geodesics or minimal surfaces on Riemannian manifolds. Another example is the over-determined problem for which constant mean-curvature surfaces play an important role. Our ultimate aim is to solve the Berestycki-Caffarelli-Nirenberg conjecture completely. II (Nonlocal Equations): Study singularities in nonlocal PDEs such as fractional Yamabe problems (existence, compactness, singular solutions), fractional minimal surfaces (stable cones, minimal graphs, foliations), Type II blowups for half-harmonic maps, the De Giorgi Conjecture for fractional AC, fractional gluing, travelling waves to fractional bistable AC.III (Type II Blow-up): Develop new techniques in analyzing Type II blow-ups in parabolic equations such as harmonic map flows, Keller-Segel, nonlinear Fujita equation with critical or supercritical nonlinearities, the Euler equation. Our goal is to determine whether or not singularities appear, and to describe the properties ofthe blowup, such as the rate, profile and stability character of blowups. Previously only symmetric cases (radial) have been analyzed. Our aim is to develop general techniques to deal with generic situations. IV (Toda Systems): Classify and analyze solutions of Toda systems with a general Lie algebra. Previous results only gave classification of $A_n$ Toda with one singularity. Our focus will be classification of Toda with a general Lie group and with more than one singularity. Then we shall use it to study non-compactness of Toda systems on manifolds and compute their Leray-Schauder degrees. We also want to construct bubbling solutions and non-topological solutions for Chern-Simons-Higgs systems. V (Reaction-Diffusion Systems): Analyze new localized patterns associated with reaction diffusion (RD) systems. New perspectives include: stability of lattice solutions in two dimensional space, existence, stability and continuum limits of clustered spikes, the effects of delays in theactivators/inhibitors, the effect of geometry for RD on closed manifolds, nonlocal RD systems, etc.