Uniqueness of positive solutions of the following equation:

has been obtained, where B ⊂ ℝn is the ball of unit radius and λ > 0. Moreover, if n = 2, then the solutions are nondegenerate.

We prove some new results which justify the use of interval truncation as a means of regularising a singular fourth-order Sturm–Liouville problem near a singular endpoint. Of particular interest are the results in the so-called lim-3 case, which has no analogue in second-order singular problems.

The purpose of this paper is to give a compactness-continuity result for the solution of a nonlinear Dirichlet problem in terms of its domain variation. The topology in the family of domains is given by the Hausdorff metric and continuity is obtained under capacity conditions. A generalisation of Sverak's result in iV-dimensions is deduced as a particular case.

We study the behaviour of the non-negative blowing up solutions to the quasilinear parabolic equation with a typical reaction–diffusion right-hand side and with a singularity in the space variable which takes the form

where m ≧ 1, p > 1 are arbitrary constants, in the critical exponent case q = (p–1)/m > 0. We impose zero Dirichlet boundary conditions at the singular point x = 0 and at x = 1, and take large initial data. For a class of ‘concave’ initial functions, we prove focusing at the origin of the solutions as t approaches the blow-up time T in the sense that x = 0 belongs to the blow-up set. The proof is based on an application of the intersection comparison method with an explicit ‘separable’ solution which has the same blow-up time as u. The method has a natural generalisation to the case of more general nonlinearities in the equation. A description of different fine structures of blow-up patterns in the semilinear case m = 1 and in the quasilinear one m > 1 is also presented. A numerical study of the semilinear equation is also made using an adaptive collocation method. This is shown to give very close agreement with the fine structure predicted and allows us to make some conjectures about the general behaviour.

The norm of an integral operator occurring in the partial wave decomposition of an operator B introduced by Brown and Ravenhall in a model for relativistic one-electron atoms is determined. The result implies that B is non-negative and has no eigenvalue at 0 when the nuclear charge does not exceed a specified critical value.

The Hartman–Wintner problem on asymptotic equivalence of fundamental systems of solutions (FSSs) for two Sturm–Liouville equations is studied. The following results are obtained: a criterion of asymptotic equivalence of FSSs, and sufficient conditions of asymptotic equivalence of FSSs which are expressed in terms of the coefficients of the considered equations only.

The monoids considered are the free monoid Mx and the free monoid-with-involution MIx on a nonempty set X. In each case, relative to a simply-defined involution, an explicit construction is given for a separating family of continuous star matrix representations of the l1-algebra of the monoid and it is shown that this algebra admits a faithful trace. The results are based on earlier work by M. J. Crabb et al. concerning the complex semigroup algebras of Mx and MIx.

Sharp upper and lower pointwise bounds are obtained for the Green's function of the equation

for λ> 0. Initially, in a Cartesian frame, it is assumed that . Pointwise estimates for the heat kernel of ut + Lu = 0, recently obtained under this assumption, are Laplace-transformed to yield corresponding elliptic results. In a second approach, the coordinate-free constraint is imposed. Within this class of operators, the equations defining the maximal and minimal Green's functions are found to be simple ODEs when written in polar coordinates, and these are soluble in terms of the singular Kummer confluent hypergeometric function. For both approaches, bounds on are derived as a consequence.

In this paper we study the asymptotic behaviour of the solution for a nonconvex relaxation model. The time decay rates in both the exponential and algebraic forms of the travelling wave solutions are shown by the weighted energy method. Our results develop and improve the stability theory in [8,9].

We consider the following problem:

where

for x ∈ RN, f(x, t), ft (x, t) ∈ C(RN × R), and f (x, t) ≧ 0 for all x ∈ RN and t ∈ R+, f(x, t) is an odd function of t. We show that if the maximum of Q(x) is achieved at k different points of RN, then for μ large enough the above problem has at least k positive solutions and k nodal solutions.

In this paper, a relationship between the periodic and the Dirichlet boundary value problems for second-order ordinary differential equations with singularities is established. This relationship may be useful in explaining the difference between the nonresonance of singular and nonsingular differential equations. Using this relationship, we give in this paper an existence result of positive periodic solutions to singular differential equations when the singular forces satisfy some strong force condition at the singularity 0 and some linear growth condition at infinity.