Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Nonlinear evolution equations have many applications in descriptions of various models, such as reaction-diffusion, activator-inhibitor, fluid and quantum mechanics and population biology. Many equations involve degenerate or singular terms and some kinds of blow-up properties which cause many challenging problems in global, blow-up and numerical computations. The objectives of this research program are to investigate the properties of global and blow-up solutions for nonlinear evolution equations both theoretically and numerically, including convergence to steady states. The expected results will include: 1.Introduce a new functional method to discuss the global and blow-up solutions for the compressible Euler equations with variable damping coefficient. Also study the asymptotic behaviors, blow-up rate and blow-up time and steady states to the equations. 2.Investigate the existence and blow-up of solutions to higher order nonlinear Schrodinger equations. 3.Modify the existing algorithms for moving mesh methods and other adaptive grid methods to numerically solve compressible Euler equations, higher order nonlinear Schrodinger equations and some complicated equations, such as the equations whose solutions blow up at space infinity. Also develop a moving mesh scheme to simulate asymptotic behaviours in an unbounded domain. 4.Deal with a class of more general quasi-linear parabolic and hyperbolic systems to find sufficient conditions on initial data to deduce global existence and blow-up properties both theoretically and numerically. The new functional method is a very powerful method to obtain a priori estimate for elliptic and parabolic equations and will be introduced to hyperbolic equations. In the functional method, we consider an integral of nth power of several solutions. Taking derivatives with respect to t and integrating by parts we obtain a differential inequality. To my knowledge, if super- and sub-solution methods can be applied to a system, then the functional method can also be applied to the system. However, the functional method only requires weaker conditions. To obtain a numerical solution in an unbounded domain, we first map the unbounded domain into a bounded domain and change equations with some kind of singularity. Then use moving mesh method to reduce errors near the singularity. The numerical solutions also serve as a guide showing when the solutions blow up, exist globally or approach a steady state.