We prove compactness of solutions to some fourth order equations with exponential nonlinearities on four manifolds. The proof is based on a refined bubbling analysis, for which the main estimates are given in integral form. Our result is used in a subsequent paper to find critical points (via minimax arguments) of some geometric functional, which give rise to conformal metrics of constant $Q$-curvature. As a byproduct of our method, we also obtain compactness of such metrics.
We consider a class of fourth order elliptic systems which include the Euler-Lagrange equations of biharmonic mappings in dimension 4 and we prove that weak limit of weak solutions to such systems is again a weak solution to a limit system.
We prove the compactness of solutions to general fourth order elliptic equations which are L^1-perturbations of the Q-curvature equation on compact Riemannian 4-maniods. Consequently, we prove the global existence and convergence of the Q-curvature flow on a generic class of Riemannian 4-manifolds. As a by product, we give a positive answer to an open question by A. Malchiodi on the existence of bounded Palais-Smale sequences for the Q-curvature problem when the Paneitz operator is positive with trivial kernel.
We deal with nonlinear weighted biharmonic problem in the unit ball of $\mathbb{R}^{4}$. The weight is of logarithm type. The nonlinearity is critical in view of Adam's inequalities in the weighted Sobolev space $W^{2,2}_{0}(B,w)$. We prove the existence of non trivial solutions via the critical point theory. The main difficulty is the loss of compactness due to the critical exponential growth of the nonlinear term $f$. We give a new growth condition and we point out its importance for checking the Palais-Smale compactness condition.
We prove the global-in-time existence of nonnegative weak solutions to a class of fourth order partial differential equations on a convex bounded domain in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our proof relies on the formal gradient flow structure of the equation with respect to the $L^2$-Wasserstein distance on the space of probability measures. We construct a weak solution by approximation via the time-discrete minimizing movement scheme; necessary compactness estimates are derived by entropy-dissipation methods. Our theory essentially comprises the thin film and Derrida-Lebowitz-Speer-Spohn equati…
In this paper we study dynamical properties of blowup solutions to the focusing intercritical (mass-supercritical and energy-subcritical) nonlinear fourth-order Schrödinger equation. We firstly establish the profile decomposition of bounded sequences in $\dot{H}^{γ_{\text{c}}} \cap \dot{H}^2$. We also prove a compactness lemma and a variational characterization of ground states related to the equation. As a result, we obtain the $\dot{H}^{γ_{\text{c}}}$-concentration of blowup solutions with bounded $\dot{H}^{γ_{\text{c}}}$-norm and the limiting profile of blowup solutions with critical $\dot{…
We study compactness for nonnegative solutions of the fourth order constant $Q$-curvature equations on smooth compact Riemannian manifolds of dimension $\ge 5$. If the $Q$-curvature equals $-1$, we prove that all solutions are universally bounded. If the $Q$-curvature is $1$, assuming that Paneitz operator's kernel is trivial and its Green function is positive, we establish universal energy bounds on manifolds which are either locally conformally flat (LCF) or of dimension $\le 9$. Moreover, assuming in addition that a positive mass type theorem holds for the Paneitz operator, we prove compact…
For smooth bounded pseudoconvex domains in $mathbb{C}^{2}$, we provide geometric conditions on (the points of infinite type in) the boundary which imply compactness of the $\bar{\partial}$-Neumann operator. It is noteworthy that the proof of compactness does \emph{not} proceed via verifying the known potential theoretic sufficient conditions.
In this paper we use the method of matched asymptotic expansions in order to obtain a geometric motion as the singular limit of a nonlinear fourth order inhomogeneous equation.
We investigate fourth order Paneitz equations of critical growth in the case of $n$-dimensional closed conformally flat manifolds, $n \ge 5$. Such equations arise from conformal geometry and are modelized on the Einstein case of the geometric equation describing the effects of conformal changes of metrics on the $Q$-curvature. We obtain sharp asymptotics for arbitrary bounded energy sequences of solutions of our equations from which we derive stability and compactness properties. In doing so we establish the criticality of the geometric equation with respect to the trace of its second order te…
A fourth-order dispersive flow equation for closed curves on the canonical two-dimensional unit sphere arises in some contexts in physics and fluid mechanics. In this paper, a geometric generalization of the sphere-valued model is considered, where the solutions are supposed to take values in compact Riemann surfaces. As a main results, time-local existence and the uniqueness of a solution to the initial value problem is established under the assumption that the sectional curvature of the Riemann surface is constant. The analytic difficulty comes from the so-called loss of derivatives and the …
We consider the following class of focusing $L^2$-supercritical fourth-order nonlinear Schrödinger equations \[ i\partial_t u - Δ^2 u + μΔu = - |u|^αu, \quad (t,x) \in \mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}^N, \] where $N\geq 2$, $μ\geq 0$, and $\frac{8}{N}<α<α^*$ with $α^*:=\frac{8}{N-4}$ if $N\geq 5$ and $α^*=\infty$ if $N\leq 4$. By using the localized Morawetz estimates and radial Sobolev embedding, we establish the energy scattering below the ground state threshold for the equation with radially symmetric initial data. We also address the existence of finite time blow-up radial solutions to the equ…
This paper is devoted to the study of a problem arising from a geometric context, namely the conformal deformation of a Riemannian metric to a scalar flat one having constant mean curvature on the boundary. By means of blow-up analysis techniques and the Positive Mass Theorem, we show that on locally conformally flat manifolds with umbilic boundary all metrics stay in a compact set with respect to the $C^2$-norm and the total Leray-Schauder degree of all solutions is equal to -1. Then we deduce from this compactness result the existence of at least one solution to our problem.
Given a compact four dimensional manifold, we prove existence of conformal metrics with constant $Q$-curvature under generic assumptions. The problem amounts to solving a fourth-order nonlinear elliptic equation with variational structure. Since the corresponding Euler functional is in general unbounded from above and from below, we employ topological methods and minimax schemes, jointly with a compactness result by the second author.
In this paper, we establish compactness for various geometric curvature energies including integral Menger curvature, and tangent-point repulsive potentials, defined a priori on the class of compact, embedded $m$-dimensional Lipschitz submanifolds in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$. It turns out that due to a smoothing effect any sequence of submanifolds with uniformly bounded energy contains a subsequence converging in $C^1$ to a limit submanifold. This result has two applications. The first one is an isotopy finiteness theorem: there are only finitely many isotopy types of such submanifolds below a given e…
The main purpose of this paper is to show the global stabilization and exact controllability properties for a fourth order nonlinear fourth order nonlinear Schrödinger system: $$i\partial_tu +\partial_x^2u-\partial_x^4u=λ|u|^2u,$$ on a periodic domain $\mathbb{T}$ with internal control supported on an arbitrary sub-domain of $\mathbb{T}$. More precisely, by certain properties of propagation of compactness and regularity in Bourgain spaces, for the solutions of the associated linear system, we show that the system is globally exponentially stabilizable. This property together with the local exa…
In this paper, we study the global well-posedness and scattering theory for the defocusing fourth-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation (FNLS) $iu_t+Δ^2 u+|u|^pu=0$ in dimension $d\geq9$. We prove that if the solution $u$ is apriorily bounded in the critical Sobolev space, that is, $u\in L_t^\infty(I;\dot H^{s_c}_x(\R^d))$ with all $s_c:=\frac{d}2-\frac4p\geq1$ if $p$ is an even integer or $s_c\in[1,2+p)$ otherwise, then $u$ is global and scatters. The impetus to consider this problem stems from a series of recent works for the energy-supercritical and energy-subcritical nonlinear Schrödinger e…
We discuss a short-time existence theorem of solutions to the initial value problem for a fourth-order dispersive flow for curves parametrized by the real line into a compact Kähler manifold. Our equations geometrically generalize a physical model describing the motion of a vortex filament or the continuum limit of the Heisenberg spin chain system. Our results are proved by using so-called the energy method. We introduce a bounded gauge transform on the pullback bundle, and make use of local smoothing effect of the dispersive flow a little.
We derive a selection of energy estimates for a generalisation of a critical equation on the unit disc in $\mathbb{R}^2$ introduced by Rivière. Applications include sharp regularity results and compactness theorems which generalise a large amount of previous geometric PDE theory, including some of the theory of harmonic and almost-harmonic maps from surfaces.
This paper is concerned with a fourth order nonlinear dispersive partial differential equation for closed curve flow on a Kähler manifold. The main results is that the initial value problem has a solution locally in time if the Kähler manifold is a compact locally hermitian symmetric space. The proof is based on the geometric energy method combined with a nice gauge transformation to eliminate the loss of derivatives. Interestingly, the results can be applied to construct a generalized bi-Schrödinger flow proposed by Ding and Wang. The assumption on the manifold plays a crucial role both to en…
We provide geometric conditions on the set of boundary points of infinite type of a smooth bounded pseudoconvex domain in $\mathbb{C}^{n}$ which imply that the $\bar{\partial}$-Neumann operator is compact. These conditions are formulated in terms of certain short time flows in suitable complex tangential directions. It is noteworthy that compactness is \emph{not} established via the known potential theoretic sufficient conditions. Our results generalize to $\mathbb{C}^{n}$ the corresponding $\mathbb C^{2}$ results due to the second author.
Let $γ> 0\,$, $β> 0\,$, $α> 0$ and $0 < σN < 4$. In the present paper, we study, for $c > 0$ given, the constrained minimization problem \begin{equation*} \label{MinL2fixed} m(c):=\inf_{u\in S (c) }E(u), \end{equation*} where \begin{equation*} E (u):=\fracγ{2}\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|Δu|^2\, dx -\fracβ{2}\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|\nabla u|^2\, dx-\fracα{2σ+2}\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|u|^{2σ+2}\, dx, \end{equation*} and \begin{equation*} S(c):=\left\{u\in H^2(\mathbb{R}^N):\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|u|^{2}\, dx=c\right\}. \end{equation*} The aim of our study is twofold. On one hand, this minimization problem is relate…
In this paper we establish a gap phenomenon for immersed surfaces with arbitrary codimension, topology and boundaries that satisfy one of a family of systems of fourth-order anisotropic geometric partial differential equations. Examples include Willmore surfaces, stationary solitons for the surface diffusion flow, and biharmonic immersed surfaces in the sense of Chen. On the boundary we enforce either umbilic or flat boundary conditions: that the tracefree second fundamental form and its derivative or the full second fundamental form and its derivative vanish. For the umbilic boundary conditio…
The Biharmonic Heat Equation with General Dynamic Boundary Conditions
Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University（卡迪阿亚德大学塞姆拉利亚理学院）；Laboratory of Mathematics, Modeling and Automatic Systems（数学、建模与自动系统实验室）；The UM6P-Vanguard Center, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic（穆罕默德六世理工大学UM6P先锋中心）；Faculty of Sciences-Agadir, Lab-SIV, Ibn Zohr University（伊本·佐赫尔大学阿加迪尔理学院SIV实验室）
We establish sharp geometric Holder regularity estimates for Gradient for bounded solutions of a class of fully nonlinear elliptic equations with non-homogeneous degeneracy. Such regularity estimates simplify and generalize, to some extent, earlier ones via a totally different modus operandi. Our approach is based on geometric tangential methods and makes use of a refined oscillation mechanism combined with compactness and scaling techniques. In the end, we present some connections of our findings with a variety of nonlinear geometric free boundary problems and relevant nonlinear problems in t…
We show precompactness results for solutions to parabolic fourth order geometric evolution equations. As part of the proof we obtain smoothing estimates for these flows in the presence of a curvature bound, an improvement on prior results which also require a Sobolev constant bound. As consequences of these results we show that for any solution with a finite time singularity, the $L^{\infty}$ norm of the curvature must go to infinity. Furthermore, we characterize the behavior at infinity of solutions with bounded curvature.
In this paper we compute the Leray Schauder degree for a fourth order elliptic boundary value problem with exponential nonlinearity and Navier boundary condition. This will be made by proving a Poincare'-Hopf type theorem. Moreover by using this result, together with some quantitative results about the formal set of barycenters, we are able to establish a direct and geometrically clear degree counting formula for our problem. We remark that this formula has been proven with complete different methods by Lin Wei and Wang by using blow-up type estimates.
We study the compactness properties of metrics of prescribed fractional $Q$-curvature of order $3$ in $\R^3$. We will use an approach inspired from conformal geometry, seeing a metric on a subset of $\R^3$ as the restriction of a metric on $\R^4_+$ with vanishing fourth-order $Q$-curvature. We will show that a sequence of such metrics with uniformly bounded fractional $Q$-curvature can blow up on a large set (roughly, the zero set of the trace of a nonpositive biharmonic function $Φ$ in $\R^4_+$), in analogy with a $4$-dimensional result of Adimurthi-Robert-Struwe, and construct examples of su…
In this paper we derive a novel fourth order gauge-invariant phenomenological model of infinitesimal rate-independent gradient plasticity with isotropic hardening and Kröner's incompatibility tensor $inc(ε_p):= Curl[(Curl ε_p)^T]$, where $ε_p=sym p$ is the symmetric infinitesimal plastic strain tensor and $p$ is the (non-symmetric) infinitesimal plastic distortion. Here, gauge-invariance denotes invariance under diffeomorphic reparametrizations of the reference configuration, suitably adapted to the geometrically linear setting. The model features a defect energy contribution which is quadrat…
In this paper, we prove that any $C^{1}$-regular Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian submanifold in a symplectic manifold is smooth. More broadly, we develop a regularity theory for a class of fourth order nonlinear elliptic equations with two distributional derivatives. Our fourth order regularity theory originates in the geometrically motivated variational problem for the volume functional, but should have applications beyond.
In this paper we prove a positive energy theorem related to fourth-order gravitational theories, which is a higher-order analogue of the classical ADM positive energy theorem of general relativity. We will also show that, in parallel to the corresponding situation in general relativity, this result intersects several important problems in geometric analysis. For instance, it underlies positive mass theorems associated to the Paneitz operator, playing a similar role in the positive $Q$-curvature conformal prescription problem as the Schoen-Yau positive energy theorem does for the Yamabe problem…
Motived by the heat flow and bubble analysis of biharmonic mappings, we study further regularity issues of the fourth order Lamm-Riviere system $$Δ^{2}u=Δ(V\cdot\nabla u)+{\rm div}(w\nabla u)+(\nablaω+F)\cdot\nabla u+f$$ in dimension four, with an inhomogeneous term $f$ which belongs to some natural function space. We obtain optimal higher order regularity and sharp Holder continuity of weak solutions. Among several applications, we derive weak compactness for sequences of weak solutions with uniformly bounded energy, which generalizes the weak convergence theory of approximate biharmonic mapp…
In this paper we prove that, given a compact four dimensional smooth Riemannian manifold (M,g) with smooth boundary there exists a metric conformal to g with constant T-curvature, zero Q-curvature and zero mean curvature under generic and conformally invariant assumptions. The problem amounts to solving a fourth order nonlinear elliptic boundary value problem (BVP) with boundary conditions given by a third-order pseudodifferential operator, and homogeneous Neumann one. It has a variational structure, but since the corresponding Euler-Lagrange functional is in general unbounded from below, we l…
Optimal solvers for fourth-order PDEs discretized on unstructured grids
LSEC, Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing, Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院计算数学与科学工程计算研究所）；Center for Computational Mathematics and Applications, Department of Mathematics, The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学数学系计算数学与应用中心）
