This book provides a self-contained introduction to the mathematical theory of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, with particular emphasis on the study of discontinuous solutions, characterized by the appearance of shock waves. This area has experienced substantial progress in very recent years thanks to the introduction of new techniques, in particular the front tracking algorithm and the semigroup approach. These techniques provide a solution to the long standing open problems of uniqueness and stability of entropy weak solutions. This volume is the first to present a comprehensive...

In recent years the need to extend the notion of degree to nonsmooth functions has been triggered by developments in nonlinear analysis and some of its applications. This new study relates several approaches to degree theory for continuous functions and incorporates newly obtained results for Sobolev functions. These results are put to use in the study of variational principles in nonlinear elasticity. Several applications of the degree are illustrated in the theories of ordinary and partial differential equations. Other topics include multiplication theorem, Hopf's theorem, Brower's fixed...

This is a book about graph homomorphisms. Graph theory is now an established discipline but the study of graph homomorphisms has only recently begun to gain wide acceptance and interest. The subject gives a useful perspective in areas such as graph reconstruction, products, fractional and circular colorings, and has applications in complexity theory, artificial intelligence, telecommunication, and, most recently, statistical physics.
Based on the authors' lecture notes for graduate courses, this book can be used as a textbook for a second course in graph theory at 4th year or master's...

The book develops the most recent ideas and concepts of the mathematical theory of viscous, compressible and heat conducting fluids. Two main goals are pursued: (I) global existence theory within the framework of variational (weak) solutions for the full system of the Navier-Stokes equations supplemented with large data; and (II) optimal existence results for the barotropic flows with respect to the available a priori estimates. The book is intended to be a compact and self-contained presentation of the most recent results of the mathematical theory of viscous compressible fluids. In order to...

This book presents the main mathematical prerequisites for analysis in metric spaces. It covers abstract measure theory, Hausdorff measures, Lipschitz functions, covering theorums, lower semicontinuity of the one-dimensional Hausdorff measure, Sobolev spaces of maps between metric spaces, and Gromov-Hausdorff theory, all developed ina general metric setting. The existence of geodesics (and more generally of minimal Steiner connections) is discussed on general metric spaces and as an application of the Gromov-Hausdorff theory, even in some cases when the ambient space is not locally compact. A...

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the mathematical theory of compressible flow, describing both inviscid and viscous compressible flow, which are governed by the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations respectively. The method of presentation allows readers with different backgrounds to focus on various modules of the material, either in part or more fully. Chapters include detailed heuristic arguments providing motivation for technical details that are rigorously presented later on in the text. This especially concerns the existence theory for steady and unsteady Navier-Stokes...

Composite materials are widely used in industry and include such well known examples as superconductors and optical fibers. However, modeling these materials is difficult, since they often has different properties at different points. The mathematical theory of homogenization is designed to handle this problem. The theory uses an idealized homogenous material to model a real composite while taking into account the microscopic structure. This introduction to homogenization theory develops the natural framework of the theory with four chapters on variational methods for partial differential...

Aimed at graduate students, researchers and academics in mathematics, engineering, oceanography, meteorology, and mechanics, this text provides a detailed introduction to the physical theory of rotating fluids, a significant part of geophysical fluid dynamics. The text is divided into four parts, with the first part providing the physical background of the geophysical models to be analyzed. Part two is devoted to a self contained proof of the existence of weak (or strong) solutions to the imcompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Part three deals with the rapidly rotating Navier-Stokes...

This text is concerned with the quantitative aspects of the theory of nonlinear diffusion equations; equations which can be seen as nonlinear variations of the classical heat equation. They appear as mathematical models in different branches of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Engineering, and are also relevant in differential geometry and relativistic physics. Much of the modern theory of such equations is based on estimates and functional analysis.
Concentrating on a class of equations with nonlinearities of power type that lead to degenerate or singular parabolicity ("equations of...

The factorization method is a relatively new method for solving certain types of inverse scattering problems in tomography. Aimed at students and researchers in Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering, this text introduces the reader to this promising approach for solving important classes of inverse problems. The wide applicability of this method is discussed by choosing typical examples, such as inverse scattering problems for the scalar Helmholtz equation, a scattering problem for Maxwell's equation, and a problem in impedance and optical tomography. The last section of the book...