Quantitative Stochastic Homogenization and Large-Scale Regularity


Book Description

The focus of this book is the large-scale statistical behavior of solutions of divergence-form elliptic equations with random coefficients, which is closely related to the long-time asymptotics of reversible diffusions in random media and other basic models of statistical physics. Of particular interest is the quantification of the rate at which solutions converge to those of the limiting, homogenized equation in the regime of large scale separation, and the description of their fluctuations around this limit. This self-contained presentation gives a complete account of the essential ideas and fundamental results of this new theory of quantitative stochastic homogenization, including the latest research on the topic, and is supplemented with many new results. The book serves as an introduction to the subject for advanced graduate students and researchers working in partial differential equations, statistical physics, probability and related fields, as well as a comprehensive reference for experts in homogenization. Being the first text concerned primarily with stochastic (as opposed to periodic) homogenization and which focuses on quantitative results, its perspective and approach are entirely different from other books in the literature.




Variational Convergence And Stochastic Homogenization Of Nonlinear Reaction-diffusion Problems


Book Description

A substantial number of problems in physics, chemical physics, and biology, are modeled through reaction-diffusion equations to describe temperature distribution or chemical substance concentration. For problems arising from ecology, sociology, or population dynamics, they describe the density of some populations or species. In this book the state variable is a concentration, or a density according to the cases. The reaction function may be complex and include time delays terms that model various situations involving maturation periods, resource regeneration times, or incubation periods. The dynamics may occur in heterogeneous media and may depend upon a small or large parameter, as well as the reaction term. From a purely formal perspective, these parameters are indexed by n. Therefore, reaction-diffusion equations give rise to sequences of Cauchy problems.The first part of the book is devoted to the convergence of these sequences in a sense made precise in the book. The second part is dedicated to the specific case when the reaction-diffusion problems depend on a small parameter ∊ₙ intended to tend towards 0. This parameter accounts for the size of small spatial and randomly distributed heterogeneities. The convergence results obtained in the first part, with additionally some probabilistic tools, are applied to this specific situation. The limit problems are illustrated through biological invasion, food-limited or prey-predator models where the interplay between environment heterogeneities in the individual evolution of propagation species plays an essential role. They provide a description in terms of deterministic and homogeneous reaction-diffusion equations, for which numerical schemes are possible.




Harmonic Analysis and Applications


Book Description

The origins of the harmonic analysis go back to an ingenious idea of Fourier that any reasonable function can be represented as an infinite linear combination of sines and cosines. Today's harmonic analysis incorporates the elements of geometric measure theory, number theory, probability, and has countless applications from data analysis to image recognition and from the study of sound and vibrations to the cutting edge of contemporary physics. The present volume is based on lectures presented at the summer school on Harmonic Analysis. These notes give fresh, concise, and high-level introductions to recent developments in the field, often with new arguments not found elsewhere. The volume will be of use both to graduate students seeking to enter the field and to senior researchers wishing to keep up with current developments.




Flowing Matter


Book Description

This open access book, published in the Soft and Biological Matter series, presents an introduction to selected research topics in the broad field of flowing matter, including the dynamics of fluids with a complex internal structure -from nematic fluids to soft glasses- as well as active matter and turbulent phenomena. Flowing matter is a subject at the crossroads between physics, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, biology and earth sciences, and relies on a multidisciplinary approach to describe the emergence of the macroscopic behaviours in a system from the coordinated dynamics of its microscopic constituents. Depending on the microscopic interactions, an assembly of molecules or of mesoscopic particles can flow like a simple Newtonian fluid, deform elastically like a solid or behave in a complex manner. When the internal constituents are active, as for biological entities, one generally observes complex large-scale collective motions. Phenomenology is further complicated by the invariable tendency of fluids to display chaos at the large scales or when stirred strongly enough. This volume presents several research topics that address these phenomena encompassing the traditional micro-, meso-, and macro-scales descriptions, and contributes to our understanding of the fundamentals of flowing matter. This book is the legacy of the COST Action MP1305 “Flowing Matter”.




Digital Materials


Book Description

Digital materials are integral to the modern design methods for industrial components and structures, allowing mechanical properties to be predicted from a description of the microstructure and behavior laws of the constituent parts. This book examines a wide range of material properties, from transport phenomena to the mechanics of materials and microstructure changes in physical metallurgy. The fundamental mechanisms of deformation, annealing and damage to materials involve complex atomic processes; these have been explored and studied by numerical simulations, such as molecular dynamics. In contrast to this minutely detailed approach, Digital Materials explores how these mechanisms can instead be integrated into an approach that considers the continuum of the physics and mechanics of materials at the mesoscopic scale. The book thus focuses on the mechanics of continuous media and the continuum thermodynamics of irreversible processes. The models displayed take the myriad properties of different materials into account, in particular their polycrystalline and/or composite natures; this becomes an intermediate step toward establishing effective laws for engineers in the processes of structure calculation and manufacturing.




Random Graphs, Phase Transitions, and the Gaussian Free Field


Book Description

The 2017 PIMS-CRM Summer School in Probability was held at the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, during June 5-30, 2017. It had 125 participants from 20 different countries, and featured two main courses, three mini-courses, and twenty-nine lectures. The lecture notes contained in this volume provide introductory accounts of three of the most active and fascinating areas of research in modern probability theory, especially designed for graduate students entering research: Scaling limits of random trees and random graphs (Christina Goldschmidt) Lectures on the Ising and Potts models on the hypercubic lattice (Hugo Duminil-Copin) Extrema of the two-dimensional discrete Gaussian free field (Marek Biskup) Each of these contributions provides a thorough introduction that will be of value to beginners and experts alike.




Research in Mathematics of Materials Science


Book Description

This volume highlights contributions of women mathematicians in the study of complex materials and includes both original research papers and reviews. The featured topics and methods draw on the fields of Calculus of Variations, Partial Differential Equations, Functional Analysis, Differential Geometry and Topology, as well as Numerical Analysis and Mathematical Modelling. Areas of applications include foams, fluid-solid interactions, liquid crystals, shape-memory alloys, magnetic suspensions, failure in solids, plasticity, viscoelasticity, homogenization, crystallization, grain growth, and phase-field models.




Homogenization Theory for Multiscale Problems


Book Description

The book provides a pedagogic and comprehensive introduction to homogenization theory with a special focus on problems set for non-periodic media. The presentation encompasses both deterministic and probabilistic settings. It also mixes the most abstract aspects with some more practical aspects regarding the numerical approaches necessary to simulate such multiscale problems. Based on lecture courses of the authors, the book is suitable for graduate students of mathematics and engineering.




Mathematics and Materials


Book Description

A co-publication of the AMS, IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Articles in this volume are based on lectures presented at the Park City summer school on “Mathematics and Materials” in July 2014. The central theme is a description of material behavior that is rooted in statistical mechanics. While many presentations of mathematical problems in materials science begin with continuum mechanics, this volume takes an alternate approach. All the lectures present unique pedagogical introductions to the rich variety of material behavior that emerges from the interplay of geometry and statistical mechanics. The topics include the order-disorder transition in many geometric models of materials including nonlinear elasticity, sphere packings, granular materials, liquid crystals, and the emerging field of synthetic self-assembly. Several lectures touch on discrete geometry (especially packing) and statistical mechanics. The problems discussed in this book have an immediate mathematical appeal and are of increasing importance in applications, but are not as widely known as they should be to mathematicians interested in materials science. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in analysis and partial differential equations, continuum mechanics, condensed matter physics, discrete geometry, and mathematical physics. Titles in this series are co-published with the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute. Members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) receive a 20% discount from list price. NOTE: This discount does not apply to volumes in this series co-published with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).




A Course on Rough Paths


Book Description

With many updates and additional exercises, the second edition of this book continues to provide readers with a gentle introduction to rough path analysis and regularity structures, theories that have yielded many new insights into the analysis of stochastic differential equations, and, most recently, stochastic partial differential equations. Rough path analysis provides the means for constructing a pathwise solution theory for stochastic differential equations which, in many respects, behaves like the theory of deterministic differential equations and permits a clean break between analytical and probabilistic arguments. Together with the theory of regularity structures, it forms a robust toolbox, allowing the recovery of many classical results without having to rely on specific probabilistic properties such as adaptedness or the martingale property. Essentially self-contained, this textbook puts the emphasis on ideas and short arguments, rather than aiming for the strongest possible statements. A typical reader will have been exposed to upper undergraduate analysis and probability courses, with little more than Itô-integration against Brownian motion required for most of the text. From the reviews of the first edition: "Can easily be used as a support for a graduate course ... Presents in an accessible way the unique point of view of two experts who themselves have largely contributed to the theory" - Fabrice Baudouin in the Mathematical Reviews "It is easy to base a graduate course on rough paths on this ... A researcher who carefully works her way through all of the exercises will have a very good impression of the current state of the art" - Nicolas Perkowski in Zentralblatt MATH