We extend a result of Lieb [‘On the lowest eigenvalue of the Laplacian for the intersection of two domains’, Invent. Math. 74(3) (1983), 441–448] to the fractional setting. We prove that if A and B are two bounded domains in $\mathbb R^N$ and $\lambda _s(A)$, $\lambda _s(B)$ are the lowest eigenvalues of $(-\Delta )^s$, $0<s<1$, with Dirichlet boundary conditions, there exists some translation $B_x$ of B such that $\lambda _s(A\cap B_x)< \lambda _s(A)+\lambda _s(B)$. Moreover, without the boundedness assumption on A and B, we show that for any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists some translation $B_x$ of B such that $\lambda _s(A\cap B_x)< \lambda _s(A)+\lambda _s(B)+\varepsilon .$

Let $\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^N$ , $N\geq 2$ , be an open bounded connected set. We consider the fractional weighted eigenvalue problem $(-\Delta )^s u =\lambda \rho u$ in $\Omega $ with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition, where $(-\Delta )^s$ , $s\in (0,1)$ , is the fractional Laplacian operator, $\lambda \in \mathbb {R}$ and $ \rho \in L^\infty (\Omega )$ .

We study weak* continuity, convexity and Gâteaux differentiability of the map $\rho \mapsto 1/\lambda _1(\rho )$ , where $\lambda _1(\rho )$ is the first positive eigenvalue. Moreover, denoting by $\mathcal {G}(\rho _0)$ the class of rearrangements of $\rho _0$ , we prove the existence of a minimizer of $\lambda _1(\rho )$ when $\rho $ varies on $\mathcal {G}(\rho _0)$ . Finally, we show that, if $\Omega $ is Steiner symmetric, then every minimizer shares the same symmetry.

In this paper we study a general eigenvalue problem for the so called (p, 2)-Laplace operator on a smooth bounded domain Ω ⊂ ℝN under a nonlinear Steklov type boundary condition, namely

\[\left\{ \begin{aligned} -\Delta_pu-\Delta u & =\lambda a(x)u \quad {\rm in}\ \Omega,\\ (|\nabla u|^{p-2}+1)\dfrac{\partial u}{\partial\nu} & =\lambda b(x)u \quad {\rm on}\ \partial\Omega . \end{aligned} \right.\]

An approach is presented for solving membrane vibration problems using an integrated scheme consisting of the Craig-Bampton (CB) reduction technique and a 2D dynamic infinite element modeling (DIEM) method. In the proposed CB-DIEM scheme, the substructure domain is partitioned into multiple layers of geometrically-similar infinite elements (IEs) which use only the data of the boundary nodes. A convergence criterion based on the first invariant of the DIEM mass matrix is used to determine the optimal parameters of the CB-DIEM scheme, namely the proportionality ratio and number of layers in the DIEM partitioning process and the number of retained frequency modes in the CB reduction method. Furthermore, in implementing the CB method, the inversion of the global stiffness matrix is calculated using only the stiffness matrix of the first element layer. Having reduced the DIEM model, a coupled DIE-FE algorithm is employed to model the dynamic problems of the full structure, which removes the respective methods disadvantages while keeping their advantages. The validity and performance of the proposed CB-DIEM method are investigated by means of three illustrative problems.

For problems governed by a non-normal operator, the leading eigenvalue of the operator is of limited interest and a more relevant measure of the stability is obtained by considering the harmonic forcing causing the largest system response. Various methods for determining this so-called optimal forcing exist, but they all suffer from great computational expense and are hence not practical for large-scale problems. In the present paper a new method is presented, which is applicable to problems of arbitrary size. The method does not rely on timestepping, but on the solution of linear systems, in which the inverse Laplacian acts as a preconditioner. By formulating the search for the optimal forcing as an eigenvalue problem based on the resolvent operator, repeated system solves amount to power iterations, in which the dominant eigenvalue is seen to correspond to the energy amplification in a system for a given frequency, and the eigenfunction to the corresponding forcing function. Implementation of the method requires only minor modifications of an existing timestepping code, and is applicable to any partial differential equation containing the Laplacian, such as the Navier-Stokes equations. We discuss the method, first, in the context of the linear Ginzburg-Landau equation and then, the two-dimensional lid-driven cavity flow governed by the Navier-Stokes equations. Most importantly, we demonstrate that for the lid-driven cavity, the optimal forcing can be computed using a factor of up to 500 times fewer operator evaluations than the standard method based on exponential timestepping.

The eigenvalue problem $-{{\Delta }_{p}}u-{{\Delta }_{q}}u=\lambda {{\left| u \right|}^{q-2}}u$ with $p\,\in \,\left( 1,\,\infty \right),\,q\,\in \,\left( 2,\,\infty \right),\,p\ne \,q$ subject to the corresponding homogeneous Neumann boundary condition is investigated on a bounded open set with smooth boundary from ${{\mathbb{R}}^{N}}$ with $N\,\ge \,2$. A careful analysis of this problem leads us to a complete description of the set of eigenvalues as being a precise interval $\left( {{\lambda }_{1,}}+\infty \right)$ plus an isolated point $\lambda \,=\,0$. This comprehensive result is strongly related to our framework, which is complementary to the well-known case $p\,=\,q\,\ne \,2$ for which a full description of the set of eigenvalues is still unavailable.

We consider the semilinear problem

where λ is a positive parameter and f has exponential critical growth. We first establish the existence of a non-zero weak solution. Then, by assuming that f is odd, we prove that the number of solutions increases when the parameter λ becomes large. In the proofs we apply variational methods in a suitable weighted Sobolev space consisting of functions with rapid decay at infinity.

We present two methods to find all the possible conformations of short six degree-of-freedom segments of biopolymers which satisfy end constraints in position and orientation. One of our methods is motivated by inverse kinematic solution techniques which have been developed for “general” 6R serial robotic manipulators. However, conventional robot kinematics methods are not directly applicable to the geometry of polymers, which can be treated as a degenerate case where all the “link lengths” are zero. Here, we propose a method which extends the elimination method of Kohli and Osvatic. This method can be applied directly to the geometry of biopolymers. We also propose a heuristic method based on a Lie-group-theoretic description. In this method, we utilize inverse iterations of the Jacobian matrix to obtain all conformations which satisfy end constraints. This can be easily implemented for both the general 6R manipulator and polymers. Although the extended elimination method is computationally faster than the Jacobian method, in cases where some of the joint angles are 180° (i.e., where the elimination method fails), we combine these two methods effectively to obtain the full set of inverse kinematic solutions. We demonstrate our approach with several numerical examples.

A multigrid method is proposed to compute the ground state solution of Bose-Einstein condensations by the finite element method based on the multilevel correction for eigenvalue problems and the multigrid method for linear boundary value problems. In this scheme, obtaining the optimal approximation for the ground state solution of Bose-Einstein condensates includes a sequence of solutions of the linear boundary value problems by the multigrid method on the multilevel meshes and some solutions of nonlinear eigenvalue problems some very low dimensional finite element space. The total computational work of this scheme can reach almost the same optimal order as solving the corresponding linear boundary value problem. Therefore, this type of multigrid scheme can improve the overall efficiency for the simulation of Bose-Einstein condensations. Some numerical experiments are provided to validate the efficiency of the proposed method.

The Teter, Payne, and Allan “preconditioning” function plays a significant role in planewave DFT calculations. This function is often called the TPA preconditioner. We present a detailed study of this “preconditioning” function. We develop a general formula that can readily generate a class of “preconditioning” functions. These functions have higher order approximation accuracy and fulfill the two essential “preconditioning” purposes as required in planewave DFT calculations. Our general class of functions are expected to have applications in other areas.

We propose two variants of tailored finite point (TFP) methods for discretizing two dimensional singular perturbed eigenvalue (SPE) problems. A continuation method and an iterative method are exploited for solving discretized systems of equations to obtain the eigen-pairs of the SPE. We study the analytical solutions of two special cases of the SPE, and provide an asymptotic analysis for the solutions. The theoretical results are verified in the numerical experiments. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed schemes effectively resolve the delta function like of the eigenfunctions on relatively coarse grid.

The saturation theorem of Knutson and Tao concerns the nonvanishing of Littlewood–Richardson coefficients. In combination with work of Klyachko, it implies Horn’s conjecture about eigenvalues of sums of Hermitian matrices. This eigenvalue problem has a generalization to majorized sums of Hermitian matrices, due to S. Friedland. We further illustrate the common features between these two eigenvalue problems and their connection to Schubert calculus of Grassmannians. Our main result gives a Schubert calculus interpretation of Friedland’s problem, via equivariant cohomology of Grassmannians. In particular, we prove a saturation theorem for this setting. Our arguments employ the aforementioned work together with recent work of H. Thomas and A. Yong.

In this article, we consider a domain consisting of two cavities linked by a hole of small size. We derive a numerical method to compute an approximation of the eigenvalues of an elliptic operator without refining in the neighborhood of the hole. Several convergence rates are obtained and illustrated by numerical simulations.

We state a superconvergence result for the lowest order Raviart-Thomas approximation of eigenvalue problems. It is known that a similar superconvergence result holds for the mixed approximation of Laplace problem; here we introduce a new proof, since the one given for the source problem cannot be generalized in a straightforward way to the eigenvalue problem. Numerical experiments confirm thesuperconvergence property and suggest that it also holds for the lowest orderBrezzi-Douglas-Marini approximation.

We consider the quasilinear elliptic variational system

\begin{alignat*} {2} -\Delta_pu\amp=\lambda F_u(x,u,v)+\mu H_u(x,u,v) \quad\amp \amp\text{in }\varOmega, \\ -\Delta_qv\amp=\lambda F_v(x,u,v)+\mu H_v(x,u,v) \amp \amp \text{in }\varOmega, \\ u\amp=v=0 \amp \amp \text{on }\partial\varOmega, \end{alignat*}

where $\varOmega$ is a strip-like domain and $\lambda$ and $\mu$ are positive parameters. Using a recent two-local-minima theorem and the principle of symmetric criticality, existence and multiplicity are proved under suitable conditions on $F$.

In this paper we study a non-standard eigenvalue problem which arises in the context of a thermal wave propagation problem, and some generalizations thereof. The eigenvalue distribution is fully explored and useful bounds on the location of the eigenvalues are obtained.