The weak-strong uniqueness for Maxwell--Stefan systems and some generalized systems is proved. The corresponding parabolic cross-diffusion equations are considered in a bounded domain with no-flux boundary conditions. The key points of the proofs are various inequalities for the relative entropy associated to the systems and the analysis of the spectrum of a quadratic form capturing the frictional dissipation. The latter task is complicated by the singular nature of the diffusion matrix. This difficulty is addressed by proving its positive definiteness on a subspace and using the Bott--Duffin matrix inverse. The generalized Maxwell--Stefan systems are shown to cover several known cross-diffusion systems for the description of tumor growth and physical vapor deposition processes.
Multi-species Boltzmann equations for gaseous mixtures, with analytic cross sections and under Grad's angular cutoff assumption, are considered under diffusive scaling. In the limit, we formally obtain an explicit expression for the binary diffusion coefficients in the Maxwell-Stefan equations.
The Navier-Stokes-Maxwell-Stefan system describes the dynamics of an incompressible gaseous mixture in isothermal condition. In this paper we set up an artificial compressibility type approximation. In particular we focus on the existence of solution for the approximated system and the convergence to the incompressible case. The existence of the approximating system is proved by means of semidiscretization in time and by estimating the fractional time derivative.
A mathematical model is proposed where the classical Maxwell-Stefan diffusion model for gas mixtures is coupled to an advection-type equation for the temperature of the physical system. This coupled system is derived from first principles in the sense that the starting point of our analysis is a system of Boltzmann equations for gaseous mixtures. We perform an asymptotic analysis on the Boltzmann model under diffuse scaling to arrive at the proposed coupled system.
The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled to the Maxwell-Stefan relations for the molar fluxes are analyzed in bounded domains with no-flux boundary conditions. The system models the dynamics of a multicomponent gaseous mixture under isothermal conditions. The global-in-time existence of bounded weak solutions to the strongly coupled model and their exponential decay to the homogeneous steady state are proved. The mathematical difficulties are due to the singular Maxwell-Stefan diffusion matrix, the cross-diffusion terms, and the Navier-Stokes coupling. The key idea of the proof is th…
Maxwell-Stefan systems describing the dynamics of the molar concentrations of a gas mixture with an arbitrary number of components are analyzed in a bounded domain under isobaric, isothermal conditions. The systems consist of mass balance equations and equations for the chemical potentials, depending on the relative velocities, supplemented with initial and homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. Global-in-time existence of bounded weak solutions to the quasilinear parabolic system and their exponential decay to the homogeneous steady state are proved. The mathematical difficulties are due to…
A Maxwell-Stefan system for fluid mixtures with driving forces depending on Cahn-Hilliard-type chemical potentials is analyzed. The corresponding parabolic cross-diffusion equations contain fourth-order derivatives and are considered in a bounded domain with no-flux boundary conditions. The main difficulty of the analysis is the degeneracy of the diffusion matrix, which is overcome by proving the positive definiteness of the matrix on a subspace and using the Bott--Duffin matrix inverse. The global existence of weak solutions and a weak-strong uniqueness property are shown by a careful combina…
The global-in-time existence of bounded weak solutions to the Maxwell-Stefan-Fourier equations in Fick-Onsager form is proved. The model consists of the mass balance equations for the partial mass densities and and the energy balance equation for the total energy. The diffusion and heat fluxes depend linearly on the gradients of the thermo-chemical potentials and the gradient of the temperature and include the Soret and Dufour effects. The cross-diffusion system exhibits an entropy structure, which originates from the thermodynamic modeling. The lack of positive definiteness of the diffusion m…
We consider the system of Maxwell-Stefan equations which describe multicomponent diffusive fluxes in non-dilute solutions or gas mixtures. We apply the Perron-Frobenius theorem to the irreducible and quasi-positive matrix which governs the flux-force relations and are able to show normal ellipticity of the associated multicomponent diffusion operator. This provides local-in-time wellposedness of the Maxwell-Stefan multicomponent diffusion system in the isobaric, isothermal case.
After the pioneering work by Giovangigli on mathematics of multicomponent flows, several attempts were made to introduce global weak solutions for the PDEs describing the dynamics of fluid mixtures. While the incompressible case with constant density was enlighted well enough due to results by Chen and Jüngel (isothermal case), or Marion and Temam, some open questions remain for the weak solution theory of gas mixtures with their corresponding equations of mixed parabolic-hyperbolic type. For instance, Mucha, Pokorny and Zatorska showed the possibility to stabilise the hyperbolic component by …
We study a kinetic model for non-reactive mixtures of monatomic gases with hard-sphere cross-sections under isothermal condition. By considering a diffusive scaling of the kinetic model and using the method of moments, we formally obtain from the continuity and momentum balance equations of the species, in the limit as the scaling parameter goes to zero, the Maxwell-Stefan diffusion equations, with an explicit expression for the diffusion coefficients.
We introduce a Darcy-scale model to describe compressible multi-component flow in a fully saturated porous medium. In order to capture cross-diffusive effects between the different species correctly, we make use of the Maxwell--Stefan theory in a thermodynamically consistent way. For inviscid flow the model turns out to be a nonlinear system of hyperbolic balance laws. We show that the dissipative structure of the Maxwell-Stefan operator permits to guarantee the existence of global classical solutions for initial data close to equilibria. Furthermore it is proven by relative entropy techniques…
The large-time asymptotics of weak solutions to Maxwell--Stefan diffusion systems for chemically reacting fluids with different molar masses and reversible reactions are investigated. The diffusion matrix of the system is generally neither symmetric nor positive definite, but the equations admit a formal gradient-flow structure which provides entropy (free energy) estimates. The main result is the exponential decay to the unique equilibrium with a rate that is constructive up to a finite-dimensional inequality. The key elements of the proof are the existence of a unique detailed-balanced equil…
In this article we deduce a mathematical model of Maxwell-Stefan type for a reactive mixture of polyatomic gases with a continuous structure of internal energy. The equations of the model are derived in the diffusive limit of a kinetic system of Boltzmann equations for the considered mixture, in the general non-isothermal setting. The asymptotic analysis of the kinetic system is performed under a reactive-diffusive scaling for which mechanical collisions are dominant with respect to chemical reactions. The resulting system couples the Maxwell-Stefan equations for the diffusive fluxes with the …
In this study we apply the maximum entropy principle to derive the properly scaled velocity distribution function of Boltzmann equations for mixtures, which leads to a non-isothermal Maxwell-Stefan diffusion model. We also analyze the entropy balance law and derive the kinetic entropy production from the scaled distribution function.
We prove existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to the two-phase Stefan problem with Gibbs-Thomson law where the free interface forms a ninety degree contact angle with the fixed boundary. We also discuss existence of global solutions and convergence to equilibria.
We investigate the diffusion asymptotics of the Boltzmann equation for gaseous mixtures, in the perturbative regime around a local Maxwellian vector whose fluid quantities solve a flux-incompressible Maxwell-Stefan system. Our framework is the torus and we consider hard-potential collision kernels with angular cutoff. As opposed to existing results about hydrodynamic limits in the mono-species case, the local Maxwellian we study here is not a local equilibrium of the mixture due to cross-interactions. By means of a hypocoercive formalism and introducing a suitable modified Sobolev norm, we bui…
The mass-based Maxwell-Stefan approach to one-phase multicomponent reactive mixtures is mathematically analyzed. It is shown that the resulting quasilinear, strongly coupled reaction-diffusion system is locally well-posed in an $L_p$-setting and generates a local semiflow on its natural state space. Solutions regularize instantly and become strictly positive if their initial components are all nonnegative and nontrivial. For a class of reversible mass-action kinetics, the positive equilibria are identified: these are precisely the constant chemical equilibria of the system, which may form a ma…
We consider the supercooled Stefan problem, which captures the freezing of a supercooled liquid, in one space dimension. A probabilistic reformulation of the problem allows to define global solutions, even in the presence of blow-ups of the freezing rate. We provide a complete description of such solutions, by relating the temperature distribution in the liquid to the regularity of the ice growth process. The latter is shown to transition between (i) continuous differentiability, (ii) Holder continuity, and (iii) discontinuity. In particular, in the second regime we rediscover the square root…
One dimensional Stefan problems for a semi-infinite material with temperature dependent thermal coefficients are considered. Existence and uniqueness of solution are obtained imposing a Dirichlet or a Robin type condition at fixed face $x=0$. Moreover, it is proved that the solution of the problem with the Robin type condition converges to the solution of the problem with the Dirichlet condition at the fixed face. Computational examples are provided.
Recently, the authors proved [2] that the Maxwell-Stefan system with an incompressibility-like condition on the total flux can be rigorously derived from the multi-species Boltzmann equation. Similar cross-diffusion models have been widely investigated, but the particular case of a perturbative incompressible setting around a non constant equilibrium state of the mixture (needed in [2]) seems absent of the literature. We thus establish a quantitative perturbative Cauchy theory in Sobolev spaces for it. More precisely, by reducing the analysis of the Maxwell-Stefan system to the study of a quas…
We study a Hele-Shaw problem with a mushy region obtained as a Mesa type limit of one phase Stefan problems in exterior domains. We study the convergence, determine some of the qualitative properties and regularity of the unique limiting solution, and prove regularity of the free boundary of this limit under very general conditions on the initial data. Indeed, our results handle changes in topology and multiple injection slots.
We introduce and analyze a nonlocal version of the one-phase Stefan problem in which, as in the classical model, the rate of growth of the volume of the liquid phase is proportional to the rate at which energy is lost through the interphase. We prove existence and uniqueness for the problem posed on the line, and on the half-line with constant Dirichlet data, and in the radial case in several dimensions. We also describe the asymptotic behaviour of both the solution and its free boundary. The model may be of interest to describe the spreading of populations in hostile environments.
We prove the uniqueness of solutions of the Maxwell-Schr"odinger system with given asymptotic behaviour at infinity in time. The assumptions include suitable restrictions on the growth of solutions for large time and on the accuracy of their asymptotics, but no restriction on their size. The result applies to the solutions with prescribed asymptotics constructed in a previous paper.
The uniqueness of bounded weak solutions to strongly coupled parabolic equations in a bounded domain with no-flux boundary conditions is shown. The equations include cross-diffusion and drift terms and are coupled selfconsistently to the Poisson equation. The model class contains special cases of the Maxwell-Stefan equations for gas mixtures, generalized Shigesada-Kawasaki-Teramoto equations for population dynamics, and volume-filling models for ion transport. The uniqueness proof is based on a combination of the $H^{-1}$ technique and the entropy method of Gajewski.
We address the existence and uniqueness of the so-called modified error function that arises in the study of phase-change problems with specific heat and thermal conductivity given by linear functions of the material temperature. This function is defined from a differential problem that depends on two parameters which are closely related with the slopes of the specific heat and the thermal conductivity. We identify conditions on these parameters which allow us to prove the existence of the modified error function. In addition, we show its uniqueness in the space of non-negative bounded analyti…
We are interested in the uniqueness of solutions to Maxwell's equations when the magnetic permeability $μ$ and the permittivity $\varepsilon$ are symmetric positive definite matrix-valued functions in $\mathbb{R}^{3}$. We show that a unique continuation result for globally $W^{1,\infty}$ coefficients in a smooth, bounded domain, allows one to prove that the solution is unique in the case of coefficients which are piecewise $W^{1,\infty}$ with respect to a suitable countable collection of sub-domains with $C^{0}$ boundaries. Such suitable collections include any bounded finite collection. The p…
In this article we consider a mathematical model of an initial stage of closure electrical contact that involves a metallic vaporization after instantaneous exploding of contact due to arc ignition with power $P_0$ on fixed face $z=0$ and heat transfer in material with a variable cross section, when the radial component of the temperature gradient can be neglected in comparison with the axial component with heat flux and convective boundary conditions prescribed at the known free boundary $z = α(t)$. The temperature field in the liquid region of such kind of material can be modelled by Stefan …
The Maxwell-Klein-Gordon system in temporal gauge is unconditionally globally well-posed in energy space, especially uniqueness holds in the natural solution space. This improves earlier results where uniqueness was only shown in a suitable subspace. It is also locally well-posed for large data below energy space.
In this article we study a mathematical model of the heat transfer in semi infinite material with a variable cross section, when the radial component of the temperature gradient can be neglected in comparison with the axial component is considered. In particular, the temperature distribution in liquid and solid phases of such kind of body can be modelled by Stefan problem for the generalized heat equation. The method of solution is based on similarity principle, which enables us to reduce generalized heat equation to nonlinear ordinary differential equation. Moreover, we determine temperature …
This work is concerned with an inverse electromagnetic scattering problem in two dimensions. We prove that in the TE polarization case, the knowledge of the electric far-field pattern incited by a single incoming wave is sufficient to uniquely determine the shape of a penetrable scatterer of rectangular type. As a by-product, the uniqueness is also confirmed to inverse transmission problems modelled by scalar Helmholtz equations with discontinuous normal derivatives at the scattering interface. Keywords: Uniqueness, inverse medium scattering, Maxwell equations, one incoming wave, shape identif…
In this paper we prove uniqueness for an inverse boundary value problem (IBVP) arising in electrodynamics. We assume that the electromagnetic properties of the medium, namely the magnetic permeability, the electric permittivity and the conductivity, are described by continuously differentiable functions.
This paper develops an abstract theory for subdifferential operators to give existence and uniqueness of solutions to the initial-boundary problem (P) for the nonlinear diffusion equation in an unbounded domain $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^N$ ($N\in{\mathbb N}$), written as \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t} + (-Δ+1)β(u) = g \quad \mbox{in}\ Ω\times(0, T), \] which represents the porous media, the fast diffusion equations, etc., where $β$ is a single-valued maximal monotone function on $\mathbb{R}$, and $T>0$. Existence and uniqueness for (P) were directly proved under a growth condition for $β$ even tho…
We investigate a coupling between the compressible Navier-Stokes-Fourier system and the full Maxwell-Stefan equations. This model describes the motion of chemically reacting heat-conducting gaseous mixture. The viscosity coefficients are density-dependent functions vanishing on vacuum and the internal pressure depends on species concentrations. By several levels of approximation we prove the global-in-time existence of weak solutions on the three-dimensional torus.
In this paper, we consider inverse time-harmonic acoustic and electromagnetic scattering from locally perturbed rough surfaces in three dimensions. The scattering interface is supposed to be the graph of a Lipschitz continuous function with compact support. It is proved that an acoustically sound-soft or sound-hard surface can be uniquely determined by the far-field pattern of infinite number of incident plane waves with distinct directions. Moreover, a single point source or plane wave can be used to uniquely determine a scattering surface of polyhedral type. These uniqueness results apply to…
We prove a uniqueness theorem for an inverse boundary value problem for the Maxwell system with boundary data assumed known only in part of the bound- ary. We assume that the inaccessible part of the boundary is either part of a plane, or part of a sphere. This work generalizes the results obtained by Isakov for the Schrödinger equation to Maxwell equations.
This paper is concerned with weak solutions {e,h} in L^2 x L^2 of the time-dependent Maxwell equations. We show that these solutions obey an energy equality. Our method of proof is based on the approximation of {e,h} by its Steklov mean with respect to time t. This approximation technique is well-known for establishing integral estimates for weak solutions of parabolic equations. In addition we prove the uniqueness of {e,h}.
We prove that the electromagnetic material parameters are uniquely determined by boundary measurements for the time-harmonic Maxwell equations in certain anisotropic settings. We give a uniqueness result in the inverse problem for Maxwell equations on an admissible Riemannian manifold, and a uniqueness result for Maxwell equations in Euclidean space with admissible matrix coefficients. The proofs are based on a new Fourier analytic construction of complex geometrical optics solutions on admissible manifolds, and involve a proper notion of uniqueness for such solutions.
Uniqueness results are established for time-independent finite-energy electromagnetic fields which solve the nonlinear Maxwell--Born--Infeld equations in boundary-free space under the condition that either the charge or current density vanishes. In addition, it is also shown that the simpler Maxwell--Born equations admit at most a unique stationary finite-energy electromagnetic field solution, without the above condition. In these theories of electromagnetism, the following physical consequences emerge: source-free field solitons moving at speeds less than the vacuum speed of light $c$ do not …
