This work studies slice functions over finite-dimensional division algebras. Their zero sets are studied in detail along with their multiplicative inverses, for which some unexpected phenomena are discovered. The results are applied to prove some useful properties of the subclass of slice regular functions, previously known only over quaternions. Firstly, they are applied to derive from the maximum modulus principle a version of the minimum modulus principle, which is in turn applied to prove the open mapping theorem. Secondly, they are applied to prove, in the context of the classification of singularities, the counterpart of the Casorati-Weierstrass theorem.

In 1987, Alavi, Malde, Schwenk and Erdős conjectured that the independence polynomial of any tree is unimodal. Although it attracts many researchers' attention, it is still open. Motivated by this conjecture, in this paper, we prove that rooted products of some graphs preserve real rootedness of independence polynomials. As application, we not only give a unified proof for some known results, but also we can apply them to generate infinite kinds of trees whose independence polynomials have only real zeros. Thus their independence polynomials are unimodal.

We consider semistable, radially symmetric and increasing solutions of Sk(D2u) = g(u) in the unit ball of ℝn, where Sk(D2u) is the k-Hessian operator of u and g ∈ C1 is a general positive nonlinearity. We establish sharp pointwise estimates for such solutions in a proper weighted Sobolev space, which are optimal and do not depend on the specific nonlinearity g. As an application of these results, we obtain pointwise estimates for the extremal solution and its derivatives (up to order three) of the equation Sk(D2u) = λg(u), posed in B1, with Dirichlet data $u\arrowvert _{B_1}=0$, where g is a continuous, positive, nonincreasing function such that lim t→−∞g(t)/|t|k = +∞.

This paper is concerned with the periodic (in time) solutions to an one-dimensional semilinear wave equation with x-dependent coefficients. Such a model arises from the forced vibrations of a nonhomogeneous string and propagation of seismic waves in nonisotropic media. By combining variational methods with saddle point reduction technique, we obtain the existence of at least three periodic solutions whenever the period is a rational multiple of the length of the spatial interval. Our method is based on a delicate analysis for the asymptotic character of the spectrum of the wave operator with x-dependent coefficients, and the spectral properties play an essential role in the proof.

We show that the Schur multiplier of a Noetherian group need not be finitely generated. We prove that the non-abelian tensor product of a polycyclic (resp. polycyclic-by-finite) group and a Noetherian group is a polycyclic (resp. polycyclic-by-finite) group. We also prove new versions of Schur's theorem.

We present some comparison results for solutions to certain non-local elliptic and parabolic problems that involve the fractional Laplacian operator and mixed boundary conditions, given by a zero Dirichlet datum on part of the complementary of the domain and zero Neumann data on the rest. These results represent a non-local generalization of a Hopf's lemma for elliptic and parabolic problems with mixed conditions. In particular we prove the non-local version of the results obtained by Dávila and Dávila and Dupaigne for the classical case s = 1 in [23, 24] respectively.

We investigate factoriality, Connes' type III invariants and fullness of arbitrary amalgamated free product von Neumann algebras using Popa's deformation/rigidity theory. Among other things, we generalize many previous structural results on amalgamated free product von Neumann algebras and we obtain new examples of full amalgamated free product factors for which we can explicitely compute Connes' type III invariants.

We consider the coupled chemotaxis-fluid model for periodic pattern formation on two- and three-dimensional domains with mixed nonhomogeneous boundary value conditions, and prove the existence of nontrivial time periodic solutions. It is worth noticing that this system admits more than one periodic solution. In fact, it is not difficult to verify that (0, c, 0, 0) is a time periodic solution. Our purpose is to obtain a time periodic solution with nonconstant bacterial density.

The simplicial complexity is an invariant for finitely presentable groups which was recently introduced by Babenko, Balacheff, and Bulteau to study systolic area. The simplicial complexity κ(G) was proved to be a good approximation of the systolic area σ(G) for large values of κ(G). In this paper we compute the simplicial complexity of all surface groups (both in the orientable and in the non-orientable case). This partially settles a problem raised by Babenko, Balacheff, and Bulteau. We also prove that κ(G * ℤ) = κ(G) for any surface group G. This provides the first partial evidence in favor of the conjecture of the stability of the simplicial complexity under free product with free groups. The general stability problem, both for simplicial complexity and for systolic area, remains open.

The present paper deals with non-real eigenvalues of singular indefinite Sturm–Liouville problems with limit-circle type endpoints. A priori bounds and the existence of non-real eigenvalues of the problem associated with a special separated boundary condition are obtained.

We introduce a second numerical index for real Banach spaces with non-trivial Lie algebra, as the best constant of equivalence between the numerical radius and the quotient of the operator norm modulo the Lie algebra. We present a number of examples and results concerning absolute sums, duality, vector-valued function spaces…which show that, in many cases, the behaviour of this second numerical index differs from the one of the classical numerical index. As main results, we prove that Hilbert spaces have second numerical index one and that they are the only spaces with this property among the class of Banach spaces with one-unconditional basis and non-trivial Lie algebra. Besides, an application to the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás property for the numerical radius is given.

We analyse the effect of random initial conditions on the local well-posedness of semi-linear PDEs, to investigate to what extent recent ideas on singular stochastic PDEs can prove useful in this framework.

In particular, in some cases, stochastic initial conditions extend the validity of the fixed-point argument to larger spaces than deterministic initial conditions would allow, but in general, it is never possible to go beyond the threshold that is predicted by critical scaling, as in our general class of equations we are not exploiting any special structure present in the equation.

We also give a specific example where the level of regularity for the fixed-point argument reached by random initial conditions is not yet critical, but it is already sharp in the sense that we find infinitely many random initial conditions of slightly lower regularity, where there is no solution at all. Thus criticality cannot be reached even by random initial conditions.

The existence and uniqueness in a critical space is always delicate, but we can consider the Burgers equation in logarithmically sub-critical spaces, where existence and uniqueness hold, and again random initial conditions allow to extend the validity to spaces of lower regularity which are still logarithmically sub-critical.

In this paper we characterize the boundedness on the product of Sobolev spaces Hs(𝕋) × Hs(𝕋) on the unit circle 𝕋, of the bilinear form Λb with symbol b ∈ Hs(𝕋) given by

$${{\Lambda}_b} (\varphi, \psi): = \int_{\open T} {\left( {{{( - {\Delta })}^s} + I} \right)(\varphi \psi )(\eta )b(\eta ) {\rm d}\sigma (\eta ).}$$

We consider a smooth curve with singular points in the Euclidean space. As a smooth curve with singular points, we have introduced a framed curve or a framed immersion. A framed immersion is a smooth curve with a moving frame and the pair is an immersion. We define an evolute and a focal surface of a framed immersion in the Euclidean space. The evolutes and focal surfaces of framed immersions are generalizations of each object of regular space curves. We give relationships between singularities of the evolutes and of the focal surfaces. Moreover, we consider properties of the evolutes, focal surfaces and repeated evolutes.

We look for best partitions of the unit interval that minimize certain functionals defined in terms of the eigenvalues of Sturm–Liouville problems. Via Γ-convergence theory, we study the asymptotic distribution of the minimizers as the number of intervals of the partition tends to infinity. Then we discuss several examples that fit in our framework, such as the sum of (positive and negative) powers of the eigenvalues and an approximation of the trace of the heat Sturm–Liouville operator.

In this note, we provide an explicit formula for computing the quasiconvex envelope of any real-valued function W; SL(2) → ℝ with W(RF) = W(FR) = W(F) for all F ∈ SL(2) and all R ∈ SO(2), where SL(2) and SO(2) denote the special linear group and the special orthogonal group, respectively. In order to obtain our result, we combine earlier work by Dacorogna and Koshigoe on the relaxation of certain conformal planar energy functions with a recent result on the equivalence between polyconvexity and rank-one convexity for objective and isotropic energies in planar incompressible nonlinear elasticity.

We characterize Fredholmness of Toeplitz operators acting on generalized Fock spaces of the n-dimensional complex space for symbols in the space of vanishing mean oscillation VMO. Our results extend the recent characterizations for Toeplitz operators on standard weighted Fock spaces to the setting of generalized weight functions and also allow for unbounded symbols in VMO for the first time. Another novelty is the treatment of small exponents 0 < p < 1, which to our knowledge has not been seen previously in the study of the Fredholm properties of Toeplitz operators on any function spaces. We accomplish this by describing the dual of the generalized Fock spaces with small exponents.

We prove existence and multiplicity of solutions for the problem

$$\left\{ {\matrix{ {\Delta ^2u + \lambda \Delta u = \vert u \vert ^{2*-2u},{\rm in }\Omega ,} \hfill \hfill \hfill \hfill \cr {u,-\Delta u > 0,\quad {\rm in}\;\Omega ,\quad u = \Delta u = 0,\quad {\rm on}\;\partial \Omega ,} \cr } } \right.$$

$\Omega \subset {\open R}^N$

$N \ges 5$

$\lambda >0$

$2^*=2N/(N-4)$

$W^{2,2}(\Omega )$

We consider the stability of nonlinear travelling waves in a class of activator-inhibitor systems. The eigenvalue equation arising from linearizing about the wave is seen to preserve the manifold of Lagrangian planes for a nonstandard symplectic form. This allows us to define a Maslov index for the wave corresponding to the spatial evolution of the unstable bundle. We formulate the Evans function for the eigenvalue problem and show that the parity of the Maslov index determines the sign of the derivative of the Evans function at the origin. The connection between the Evans function and the Maslov index is established by a ‘detection form,’ which identifies conjugate points for the curve of Lagrangian planes.

We devote this paper to proving non-existence and existence of stable solutions to weighted Lane-Emden equations on the Euclidean space ℝN, N ⩾ 2. We first prove some new Liouville-type theorems for stable solutions which recover and considerably improve upon the known results. In particular, our approach applies to various weighted equations, which naturally appear in many applications, but that are not covered by the existing literature. A typical example is provided by the well-know Matukuma's equation. We also prove an existence result for positive, bounded and stable solutions to a large family of weighted Lane–Emden equations, which indicates that our Liouville-type theorems are somehow sharp.