The present paper investigates the mechanism of interface closure in the root region of the solutions for steady deep-cellular growth. This phenomenon is determined by a transcendentally small factor beyond all orders. It is found that the root region comprises three inner-inner regions; the inner system in the root region has a simple turning point, whose presence generates the so-called trapped-waves mechanism, which is responsible for the interface closure at the bottom of root. The quantization condition derived from the trapped-waves mechanism yields the eigenvalue that determines the location of interface closure and its dependence on the interfacial energy and other physical parameters.

The bifurcation of symmetric superconducting solutions from the normal solution is considered for the one-dimensional Ginzburg–Landau equations by the methods of formal asymptotics. The behaviour of the bifurcating branch depends upon the parameters d, the size of the superconducting slab, and κ, the Ginzburg–Landau parameter. It was found numerically by Aftalion & Troy [1] that there are three distinct regions of the (κ, d) plane, labelled S1, S2 and S3, in which there are at most one, two and three symmetric solutions of the Ginzburg–Landau system, respectively. The curve in the (κ, d) plane across which the bifurcation switches from being subcritical to supercritical is identified, which is the boundary between S2 and S1∪S3, and the bifurcation diagram is analysed in its vicinity. The triple point, corresponding to the point at which S1, S2 and S3 meet, is determined, and the bifurcation diagram and the boundaries of S1, S2 and S3 are analysed in its vicinity. The results provide formal evidence for the resolution of some of the conjectures of Aftalion & Troy [1].

This paper is concerned with the positive solutions of the boundary-value problem \[ \left\{{\begin{array}{@{}l@{}}{\varepsilon u^{''} - \sigma (u) = -\gamma,}\\{u(0) = u(1) = 0,}\\ \end{array}}\right.\] where $\varepsilon$ is a small positive parameter and $\gamma$ is a positive constant. The nonlinear term $\sigma(u)$ behaves like a cubic; it vanishes only at $u=0$, where $\sigma'(0) > 0$ and $\sigma''(0) < 0$. This problem arises in a study of phase transitions in a slender circular cylinder composed of an incompressible phase-transforming material. Here, we determine the number of solutions to the problem for any given $\gamma$, derive asymptotic formulas for these solutions, and show that the error terms associated with these formulas are exponentially small, except for one critical value of $\gamma$. Our approach is again based on the shooting method used previously by Ou & Wong (Stud. Appl. Math.112 (2004), 161-200).

We study the propagation of a crack in critical equilibrium for a brittle material in a Mode III field. The energy variations for small virtual extensions of the crack are handled in a novel way: the amount of energy released is written as a functional over a family of univalent functions on the upper half plane. Classical techniques developed in connection to the Bieberbach Conjecture are used to quantify the energy-shape relationship. By means of a special family of trial paths generated by the so-called Löwner equation we impose a stability condition on the field which derives in a local crack propagation criterion. We called this the anti-symmetry principle, being closely related to the well known symmetry principle for the in-plane fields.

Volume 9 (1998), pp. 485–506

One of the author's names was misprinted in this article. EPIFIANO G. VIRGA should read EPIFANIO G. VIRGA.

In addition, on page 502, line 9, the argument leading to evaluate g(∞) := limb→+∞g(b) is not conclusive. The passage

‘On the other hand, if it were g(∞)>0, taking the limit as b→+∞ in (9.9), we would get A=πh2, which by (3.11) is violated by all admissible values of A, but the limiting one. Thus we conclude that g(∞)=0.’

should be changed as follows:

‘On the other hand, taking the limit as b→+∞ in (9.9), we would get A=πh2, by which (3.11) is violated by all admissible values of A, but the limiting one. Thus we conclude that, in the limit as b→+∞, the equilibrium configuration must be singular whenever A>πh2, and so g(∞)=0 because, otherwise, by (9.7) there would be asymptotic regular configurations, as soon as h/2kc(τ0+w) is sufficiently small.’

On page 502, line −7, ‘below’ should be replaced with ‘above’ and ‘regular’ with ‘singular’.

We apologise for the errors in the above paper and hope that no inconvenience has been caused to readers.

The limit Wigner measure of a WKB function satisfies a simple transport equation in phase-space and is well suited for capturing oscillations at scale of order $O(\epsilon)$, but it fails, for instance, to provide the correct amplitude on caustics where different scales appear. We define the semi-classical Wigner function of an $N$-dimensional WKB function, as a suitable formal approximation of its scaled Wigner function. The semi-classical Wigner function is an oscillatory integral that provides an $\epsilon$-dependent regularization of the limit Wigner measure, it obeys a transport-dispersive evolution law in phase space, and it is well defined even at simple caustics.

The time-varying flow in which fluid is withdrawn from or added to a reservoir of infinite or arbitrary finite depth through a point sink or source of variable strength beneath a free surface is considered. Backed up by some analytic work, a numerical method is used, and the results are compared with previous work on steady and unsteady flows. In the case of withdrawal for an impulsively started flow, it is found that the critical flow rate increases with reservoir depth, although it changes little as the depth increases beyond double the sink submergence depth. The largest flow rate at which steady solutions can evolve in source flows follows a similar pattern although at a considerably higher value. Simulations indicate that some of the previously calculated steady state solutions at higher flow rates may be unstable, if they exist at all.

The study of spherically symmetric motion is important for the theory of explosion waves. In this paper, we consider a ‘spherical piston’ problem for the relativistic Euler equations, which describes the wave motion produced by a sphere expanding into an infinite surrounding medium. We use the reflected characteristics method to construct a global piecewise smooth solution with a single shock of this spherical piston problem, provided that the speed of the sphere is a small perturbation of a constant speed.

A free boundary problem, which comes from the model of the perpetual American call options with utility functions in financial market, is investigated. It is a degenerative parabolic free boundary problem and is studied by the line method. The existence, regularity and uniqueness of the solution as well as some properties of the free boundary are established.

In this paper, we consider reaction-diffusion epidemic models with mass action or standard incidence mechanism and study the impact of limiting population movement on disease transmissions. We set either the dispersal rate of the susceptible or infected people to zero and study the corresponding degenerate reaction-diffusion model. Our main approach to study the global dynamics of these models is to construct delicate Lyapunov functions. Our results show that the consequences of limiting the movement of susceptible or infected people depend on transmission mechanisms, model parameters and population size.

We consider the long-time behaviour of a West Nile virus (WNv) model consisting of a reaction–diffusion system with free boundaries. Such a model describes the spreading of WNv with the free boundary representing the expanding front of the infected region, which is a time-dependent interval $[g(t), h(t)]$ in the model (Lin and Zhu, Spatial spreading model and dynamics of West Nile virus in birds and mosquitoes with free boundary. J. Math. Biol. 75, 1381–1409, 2017). The asymptotic spreading speed of the front has been determined in Wang et al. (Spreading speed for a West Nile virus model with free boundary. J. Math. Biol. 79, 433–466, 2019) by making use of the associated semi-wave solution, namely $\lim _{t\to \infty } h(t)/t=\lim _{t\to \infty }[\!-g(t)/t]=c_\nu$, with $c_\nu$ the speed of the semi-wave solution. In this paper, by employing new techniques, we significantly improve the estimate in Wang et al. (Spreading speed for a West Nile virus model with free boundary. J. Math. Biol. 79, 433–466, 2019): we show that $h(t)-c_\nu t$ and $g(t)+c_\nu t$ converge to some constants as $t\to \infty$, and the solution of the model converges to the semi-wave solution. The results also apply to a wide class of analogous Ross–MacDonold epidemic models.

Recently, many security-related problems have gained increasing attention from a quantitative perspective. In this paper, we propose a game-theoretical approach to model the interaction between police forces and delinquents in public places. In the well-known Stackelberg game, a leader is faced with only one follower. However, in our application, the police are simultaneously faced with many offenders, who may be organized or act independently of each other. This application motivates the development of two games: a classical leader-follower interaction between police and organized criminals on the one hand and a novel approach between the leader and selfishly acting offenders on the other. It is of special interest that the effect of crime displacement under police surveillance be anticipated by the proposed models. Results using data from a simulated environment emphasise how these models can provide decision support for policing outperforming traditional strategies.

In numerical linear stability investigations, the rates of change of the kinetic and thermal energy of the perturbation flow are often used to identify the dominant mechanisms by which kinetic or thermal energy is exchanged between the basic and the perturbation flow. Extending the conventional energy analysis for a single-phase Boussinesq fluid, the energy budgets of arbitrary infinitesimal perturbations to the basic two-phase liquid–gas flow are derived for an axisymmetric thermocapillary bridge when the material parameters in both phases depend on the temperature. This allows identifying individual transport terms and assessing their contributions to the instability if the basic flow and the critical mode are evaluated at criticality. The full closed-form energy budgets of linear modes have been derived for thermocapillary two-phase flow taking into account the temperature dependence of all thermophysical parameters. The influence of different approximations to the temperature dependence on the linear stability boundary of the axisymmetric flow in thermocapillary liquid bridges is tested regarding their accuracy. The general mechanism of symmetry breaking turns out to be very robust.

A model of cell-growth, describing the evolution of the age–size distribution of cells in different phases of cell-growth, is studied. The model is based on that used in several papers by Basse et al. and is composed of a system of partial differential equations, each describing the changes in the age–size distribution of cells in a specific phase of cell-growth. Here, the ‘age’ of a cell is considered to be the time spent in its current phase of cell-growth, while ‘size’ is considered to be the DNA content of the cell. The existence of steady age–size distributions (SASDs), where the age–size distributions retain the same shape but are scaled up or down as time increases, is investigated and it is shown that SASDs exist. A speculative discussion of the stability of these SASDs is also included, but their stability is not conclusively proved.

We investigate a degenerate parabolic variational inequality arising from optimal continuous exercise perpetual executive stock options. It is also shown in Qin et al. (Continuous-Exercise Model for American Call Options with Hedging Constraints, working paper, available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2757541) that to make this problem non-trivial the stock's growth rate must be no smaller than the discount rate. Well-posedness of the problem is established in Lai et al. (2015, Mathematical analysis of a variational inequality modeling perpetual executive stock options, Euro. J. Appl. Math., 26 (2015), 193–213), Qin et al. (2015, Regularity free boundary arising from optimal continuous exercise perpetual executive stock options, Interfaces and Free Boundaries, 17 (2015), 69–92), Song & Yu (2011, A parabolic variational inequality related to the perpetual American executive stock options, Nonlinear Analysis, 74 (2011), 6583-6600) for the case when the underlying stock's expected return rate is smaller than the discount rate. In this paper, we consider the remaining case: the discount rate is bigger than the growth rate but no bigger than the return rate. The existence of a unique classical solution as well as a continuous and strictly decreasing free boundary is proved.

In this article the complex variable theory of two-dimensional Stokes flow as developed by Richardson [22], and modified by Howison & Richardson [16], is reviewed. The analysis of [16] is extended to a new solution driven by a point sink, which uses a cubic polynomial conformal mapping (with real coefficients) from the unit disk onto the fluid domain. This solution is analysed in the limit of small surface tension. An apparent ‘stability paradox’ (where two equivalent flow geometries are found, one of which is ‘stable’ and the other unstable) is resolved by allowing the coefficients to take complex values.

We analyse the structure of equilibria of a coagulation–fragmentation–death model of silicosis. We present exact multiplicity results in the particular case of piecewise constant coefficients, results on existence and non-existence of equilibria in the general case, as well as precise asymptotics for the infinite series that arise in the case of power law coefficients.

In this work we investigate limiting values of the lift and drag coefficients of profiles in the Helmholtz–Kirchhoff (infinite cavity) flow. The coefficients are based on the wetted arc length of profile surfaces. The problem is to find global minimum and maximum values of the drag coefficient CD under a given lift coefficient CL. We reduce the problem to a constrained problem of calculus of variations and solve it analytically. In so doing we do not only determine extremals but also strictly prove that these extremals realize global extrema. The proofs are based on non-trivial application of Jensen's inequality. The solution of the problem allows us to construct the domain of possible variations of coefficients CL and CD and define maximum and minimum values of the lift-to-drag ratios CL/CD for a given CL.

Systematic asymptotic methods are used to formulate a model for the extensional flow of a thin sheet of nematic liquid crystal. With no external body forces applied, the model is found to be equivalent to the so-called Trouton model for Newtonian sheets (and fibres), albeit with a modified ‘Trouton ratio’. However, with a symmetry-breaking electric field gradient applied, behaviour deviates from the Newtonian case, and the sheet can undergo finite-time breakup if a suitable destabilizing field is applied. Some simple exact solutions are presented to illustrate the results in certain idealized limits, as well as sample numerical results to the full model equations.

Dorsey et al. [8] have constructed formal solutions for the half-space Ginzburg–Landau model, when κ is small. Dorsey et al. deduce a formal expansion for the superheating field in powers of κ½ up to order 4. In this paper, we show how the formal construction gives a natural way for constructing a subsolution for the Ginzburg–Landau system. We improve the result obtained by Bolley & Helffer [2], and take a step in the proof of the Parr Formula [13], getting two terms in the lower bound for the superheating field as κ → 0.