Problems Involving Change of Type

The contributions deal with changing-type phenomena from both physical and mathematical points of view. Among the topics discussed are spontaneous phase transitions in crystals, clusterdynamics, and shock phenomena in transonic flows. The book provides a good survey of recent developments in this active field of research.

Dynamics and minimizing sequences.- Discontinuous solutions of bounded variations to problems of the calculus of variations and of quasi linear hyperbolic differential equations. Integrals of Serrin and Weierstrass..- Minimizing sequences for nonconvex functionals, phase transitions and singular perturbations.- Dynamics of cluster growth.- A geometric approach to the dynamics of u t = ?2 u ?? + f(u) for small ?.- On the isothermal motion of a phase interface.- The relaxed invariance principle and weakly dissipative infinite dimensional dynamical systems.- Mathematical problems associated with the elasticity of liquids.- Analysis of spurt phenomena for a non-newtonian fluid.- Boundary conditions for steady flows of viscoelastic fluids.- The use of vectorfield dynamics in formulating admissibility conditions for shocks in conservation laws that change type.- On the Cauchy problem for the Davey-Stewartson system.- Inverse scattering and factorization theory.- Recent results on the Cauchy problem and initial traces for degenerate parabolic equations.- A nonlinear eigenvalue problem involving free boundaries.- Two nonlinear diffusion equations with finite speed of propagation.