This book focuses on nonlinear boundary value problems and the aspects of nonlinear analysis which are necessary to their study. The authors first give a comprehensive introduction to the many different classical methods from nonlinear analysis, variational principles, and Morse theory. They then provide a rigorous and detailed treatment of the relevant areas of nonlinear analysis with new applications to nonlinear boundary value problems for both ordinary and partial differential equations. Recent results on the existence and multiplicity of critical points for both smooth and nonsmooth functional, developments on the degree theory of monotone type operators, nonlinear maximum and comparison principles for p-Laplacian type operators, and new developments on nonlinear Neumann problems involving non-homogeneous differential operators appear for the first time in book form. The presentation is systematic, and an extensive bibliography and a remarks section at the end of each chapter highlight the text. This work will serve as an invaluable reference for researchers working in nonlinear analysis and partial differential equations as well as a useful tool for all those interested in the topics presented.

This book exposes a number of mathematical models for fracture of growing difficulty. All models are treated in a unified way, based on incremental energy minimization. They differ from each other by the assumptions made on the inelastic part of the total energy, here called the "cohesive energy". Each model describes a specific aspect of material response, and particular care is devoted to underline the correspondence of each model to the experiments. The content of the book is a re-elaboration of the lectures delivered at the First Sperlonga Summer School on Mechanics and Engineering Sciences in September 2011. In the year and a half elapsed after the course, the material has been revised and enriched with new and partially unpublished results. Significant additions have been introduced in the occasion of the course "The variational approach to fracture and other inelastic phenomena", delivered at SISSA, Trieste, in March 2013. The Notes reflect a research line carried on by the writer over the years, addressed to a comprehensive description of the many aspects of the phenomenon of fracture, and to its relations with other phenomena, such as the formation of microstructure and the changes in the material's strength induced by plasticity and damage. Reprinted from the Journal of Elasticity, volume 112, issue 1, 2013.

These Proceedings offer a selection of peer-reviewed research and survey papers by some of the foremost international researchers in the fields of finance, energy, stochastics and risk, who present their latest findings on topical problems. The papers cover the areas of stochastic modeling in energy and financial markets; risk management with environmental factors from a stochastic control perspective; and valuation and hedging of derivatives in markets dominated by renewables, all of which further develop the theory of stochastic analysis and mathematical finance. The papers were presented at the first conference on "Stochastics of Environmental and Financial Economics (SEFE)", being part of the activity in the SEFE research group of the Centre of Advanced Study (CAS) at the Academy of Sciences in Oslo, Norway during the 2014/2015 academic year.

At the close of the 1980s, the independent contributions of Yann Brenier, Mike Cullen and John Mather launched a revolution in the venerable field of optimal transport founded by G. Monge in the 18th century, which has made breathtaking forays into various other domains of mathematics ever since. The author presents a broad overview of this area, supplying complete and self-contained proofs of all the fundamental results of the theory of optimal transport at the appropriate level of generality. Thus, the book encompasses the broad spectrum ranging from basic theory to the most recent research results. PhD students or researchers can read the entire book without any prior knowledge of the field. A comprehensive bibliography with notes that extensively discuss the existing literature underlines the book's value as a most welcome reference text on this subject.

Geostationary Satellites Collocation aims to find solutions for deploying a safe and reliable collocation control. Focusing on the orbital perturbation analysis, the mathematical foundations for orbit and control of the geostationary satellite. The mathematical and physical principle of orbital maneuver and collocation strategies for multi geostationary satellites sharing with the same dead band is also stressed. Moreover, the book presents some applications using the above algorithms and mathematical models to help readers master the corrective method for planning station keeping maneuvers. Engineers and scientists in the fields of aerospace technology and space science can benefit from this book. Hengnian Li is the Deputy Director of State Key Laboratory of Astronautic Dynamics, China.

This book is the first easy-to-read text on nonsmooth optimization (NSO, not necessarily differentiable optimization). Solving these kinds of problems plays a critical role in many industrial applications and real-world modeling systems, for example in the context of image denoising, optimal control, neural network training, data mining, economics and computational chemistry and physics. The book covers both the theory and the numerical methods used in NSO and provide an overview of different problems arising in the field. It is organized into three parts: 1. convex and nonconvex analysis and the theory of NSO; 2. test problems and practical applications; 3. a guide to NSO software. The book is ideal for anyone teaching or attending NSO courses. As an accessible introduction to the field, it is also well suited as an independent learning guide for practitioners already familiar with the basics of optimization.

This book showcases a subclass of hereditary systems, that is, systems with behaviour depending not only on their current state but also on their past history; it is an introduction to the mathematical theory of optimal control for stochastic difference Volterra equations of neutral type. As such, it will be of much interest to researchers interested in modelling processes in physics, mechanics, automatic regulation, economics and finance, biology, sociology and medicine for all of which such equations are very popular tools. The text deals with problems of optimal control such as meeting given performance criteria, and stabilization, extending them to neutral stochastic difference Volterra equations. In particular, it contrasts the difference analogues of solutions to optimal control and optimal estimation problems for stochastic integral Volterra equations with optimal solutions for corresponding problems in stochastic difference Volterra equations. Optimal Control of Stochastic Difference Volterra Equations commences with an historical introduction to the emergence of this type of equation with some additional mathematical preliminaries. It then deals with the necessary conditions for optimality in the control of the equations and constructs a feedback control scheme. The approximation of stochastic quasilinear Volterra equations with quadratic performance functionals is then considered. Optimal stabilization is discussed and the filtering problem formulated. Finally, two methods of solving the optimal control problem for partly observable linear stochastic processes, also with quadratic performance functionals, are developed. Integrating the author's own research within the context of the current state-of-the-art of research in difference equations, hereditary systems theory and optimal control, this book is addressed to specialists in mathematical optimal control theory and to graduate students in pure and applied mathematics and control engineering.

Here is a collection of nonlinear optimization applications from the real world, expressed in the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). The concepts are presented so that the reader can quickly modify and update them to represent real-world situations.

This book clearly shows the importance, usefulness, and powerfulness of current optimization technologies, in particular, mixed-integer programming and its remarkable applications. It is intended to be the definitive study of state-of-the-art optimization technologies for students, academic researchers, and non-professionals in industry. The chapters of this book are based on a collection of selected and extended papers from the "IMI Workshop on Optimization in the Real World" held in October 2014 in Japan.

The book presents, in a systematic manner, the optimal controls under different mathematical models in fermentation processes. Variant mathematical models - i.e., those for multistage systems; switched autonomous systems; time-dependent and state-dependent switched systems; multistage time-delay systems and switched time-delay systems - for fed-batch fermentation processes are proposed and the theories and algorithms of their optimal control problems are studied and discussed. By putting forward novel methods and innovative tools, the book provides a state-of-the-art and comprehensive systematic treatment of optimal control problems arising in fermentation processes. It not only develops nonlinear dynamical system, optimal control theory and optimization algorithms, but can also help to increase productivity and provide valuable reference material on commercial fermentation processes.

This book presents the use of efficient Evolutionary Computation (EC) algorithms for solving diverse real-world image processing and pattern recognition problems. It provides an overview of the different aspects of evolutionary methods in order to enable the reader in reaching a global understanding of the field and, in conducting studies on specific evolutionary techniques that are related to applications in image processing and pattern recognition. It explains the basic ideas of the proposed applications in a way that can also be understood by readers outside of the field. Image processing and pattern recognition practitioners who are not evolutionary computation researchers will appreciate the discussed techniques beyond simple theoretical tools since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise on such areas. On the other hand, members of the evolutionary computation community can learn the way in which image processing and pattern recognition problems can be translated into an optimization task. The book has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others. It can serve as reference book for students and researchers with basic knowledge in image processing and EC methods.

The analysis of PDEs is a prominent discipline in mathematics research, both in terms of its theoretical aspects and its relevance in applications. In recent years, the geometric properties of linear and nonlinear second order PDEs of elliptic and parabolic type have been extensively studied by many outstanding researchers. This book collects contributions from a selected group of leading experts who took part in the INdAM meeting "Geometric methods in PDEs", on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Ermanno Lanconelli. They describe a number of new achievements and/or the state of the art in their discipline of research, providing readers an overview of recent progress and future research trends in PDEs. In particular, the volume collects significant results for sub-elliptic equations, potential theory and diffusion equations, with an emphasis on comparing different methodologies and on their implications for theory and applications.

Featuring original research from well-known experts in the field of sliding mode control, this book presents new design schemes for a useful and practical optimal control with very few impractical assumptions. The results presented allow optimal control theory to grow in its applicability to real-world systems. On the cutting-edge of optimal control research, this book is an excellent resource for both graduate students and researchers in engineering, mathematics, and optimal control.

This book offers a comprehensive collection of the most advanced numerical techniques for the efficient and effective solution of simulation and optimization problems governed by systems of time-dependent differential equations. The contributions present various approaches to time domain decomposition, focusing on multiple shooting and parareal algorithms. The range of topics covers theoretical analysis of the methods, as well as their algorithmic formulation and guidelines for practical implementation. Selected examples show that the discussed approaches are mandatory for the solution of challenging practical problems. The practicability and efficiency of the presented methods is illustrated by several case studies from fluid dynamics, data compression, image processing and computational biology, giving rise to possible new research topics. This volume, resulting from the workshop Multiple Shooting and Time Domain Decomposition Methods, held in Heidelberg in May 2013, will be of great interest to applied mathematicians, computer scientists and all scientists using mathematical methods.

This book is comprised of selected research articles developed from a workshop on Ergodic Theory, Probabilistic Methods and Applications, held in April 2012 at the Banff International Research Station. It contains contributions from world leading experts in ergodic theory, numerical dynamical systems, molecular dynamics and ocean/atmosphere dynamics, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The volume will serve as a valuable reference for mathematicians, physicists, engineers, biologists and climate scientists, who currently use, or wish to learn how to use, probabilistic techniques to cope with dynamical models that display open or non-equilibrium behavior.

This book collects papers mainly presented at the "International Conference on Partial Differential Equations: Theory, Control and Approximation" (May 28 to June 1, 2012 in Shanghai) in honor of the scientific legacy of the exceptional mathematician Jacques-Louis Lions. The contributors are leading experts from all over the world, including members of the Academies of Sciences in France, the USA and China etc., and their papers cover key fields of research, e.g. partial differential equations, control theory and numerical analysis, that Jacques-Louis Lions created or contributed so much to establishing.

This monograph presents a rigorous mathematical introduction to optimal transport as a variational problem, its use in modeling various phenomena, and its connections with partial differential equations. Its main goal is to provide the reader with the techniques necessary to understand the current research in optimal transport and the tools which are most useful for its applications. Full proofs are used to illustrate mathematical concepts and each chapter includes a section that discusses applications of optimal transport to various areas, such as economics, finance, potential games, image processing and fluid dynamics. Several topics are covered that have never been previously in books on this subject, such as the Knothe transport, the properties of functionals on measures, the Dacorogna-Moser flow, the formulation through minimal flows with prescribed divergence formulation, the case of the supremal cost, and the most classical numerical methods. Graduate students and researchers in both pure and applied mathematics interested in the problems and applications of optimal transport will find this to be an invaluable resource.

This book studies some of the groundbreaking advances that have been made regarding analytic capacity and its relationship to rectifiability in the decade 1995-2005. The Cauchy transform plays a fundamental role in this area and is accordingly one of the main subjects covered. Another important topic, which may be of independent interest for many analysts, is the so-called non-homogeneous Calderon-Zygmund theory, the development of which has been largely motivated by the problems arising in connection with analytic capacity. The Painleve problem, which was first posed around 1900, consists in finding a description of the removable singularities for bounded analytic functions in metric and geometric terms. Analytic capacity is a key tool in the study of this problem. In the 1960s Vitushkin conjectured that the removable sets which have finite length coincide with those which are purely unrectifiable. Moreover, because of the applications to the theory of uniform rational approximation, he posed the question as to whether analytic capacity is semiadditive. This work presents full proofs of Vitushkin's conjecture and of the semiadditivity of analytic capacity, both of which remained open problems until very recently. Other related questions are also discussed, such as the relationship between rectifiability and the existence of principal values for the Cauchy transforms and other singular integrals. The book is largely self-contained and should be accessible for graduate students in analysis, as well as a valuable resource for researchers.

This book presents an extensive collection of state-of-the-art results and references in nonlinear functional analysis demonstrating how the generic approach proves to be very useful in solving many interesting and important problems. Nonlinear analysis plays an ever-increasing role in theoretical and applied mathematics, as well as in many other areas of science such as engineering, statistics, computer science, economics, finance, and medicine. The text may be used as supplementary material for graduate courses in nonlinear functional analysis, optimization theory and approximation theory, and is a treasure trove for instructors, researchers, and practitioners in mathematics and in the mathematical sciences. Each chapter is self-contained; proofs are solid and carefully communicated. Genericity in Nonlinear Analysis is the first book to systematically present the generic approach to nonlinear analysis. Topics presented include convergence analysis of powers and infinite products via the Baire Category Theorem, fixed point theory of both single- and set-valued mappings, best approximation problems, discrete and continuous descent methods for minimization in a general Banach space, and the structure of minimal energy configurations with rational numbers in the Aubry-Mather theory.

This book provides an introductory yet rigorous treatment of Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and its application to optimal control problems when simple and complex constraints act on state and control variables, the two classes of variable in such problems. The achievements resulting from first-order variational methods are illustrated with reference to a large number of problems that, almost universally, relate to a particular second-order, linear and time-invariant dynamical system, referred to as the double integrator. The book is ideal for students who have some knowledge of the basics of system and control theory and possess the calculus background typically taught in undergraduate curricula in engineering. Optimal control theory, of which the Maximum Principle must be considered a cornerstone, has been very popular ever since the late 1950s. However, the possibly excessive initial enthusiasm engendered by its perceived capability to solve any kind of problem gave way to its equally unjustified rejection when it came to be considered as a purely abstract concept with no real utility. In recent years it has been recognized that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, and optimal control has found its (appropriate yet limited) place within any curriculum in which system and control theory plays a significant role.

This monograph explores the early development of the calculus of variations in continental Europe during the Eighteenth Century by illustrating the mathematics of its founders. Closely following the original papers and correspondences of Euler, Lagrange, the Bernoullis, and others, the reader is immersed in the challenge of theory building. We see what the founders were doing, the difficulties they faced, the mistakes they made, and their triumphs. The authors guide the reader through these works with instructive commentaries and complements to the original proofs, as well as offering a modern perspective where useful. The authors begin in 1697 with Johann Bernoulli's work on the brachystochrone problem and the events leading up to it, marking the dawn of the calculus of variations. From there, they cover key advances in the theory up to the development of Lagrange's -calculus, including: * The isoperimetrical problems * Shortest lines and geodesics * Euler's Methodus Inveniendi and the two Additamenta Finally, the authors give the readers a sense of how vast the calculus of variations has become in centuries hence, providing some idea of what lies outside the scope of the book as well as the current state of affairs in the field. This book will be of interest to anyone studying the calculus of variations who wants a deeper intuition for the techniques and ideas that are used, as well as historians of science and mathematics interested in the development and evolution of modern calculus and analysis.

This book provides readers with a detailed insight into diverse and exciting recent developments in computational solid mechanics, documenting new perspectives and horizons. The topics addressed cover a wide range of current research, from computational materials modeling, including crystal plasticity, micro-structured materials, and biomaterials, to multi-scale simulations of multi-physics phenomena. Particular emphasis is placed on pioneering discretization methods for the solution of coupled non-linear problems at different length scales. The book, written by leading experts, reflects the remarkable advances that have been made in the field over the past decade and more, largely due to the development of a sound mathematical background and efficient computational strategies. The contents build upon the 2014 IUTAM symposium celebrating the 60th birthday of Professor Michael Ortiz, to whom this book is dedicated. His work has long been recognized as pioneering and is a continuing source of inspiration for many researchers. It is hoped that by providing a "taste" of the field of computational mechanics, the book will promote its popularity among the mechanics and physics communities.

This edited monograph includes state-of-the-art contributions on continuous time dynamical networks with delays. The book is divided into four parts. The first part presents tools and methods for the analysis of time-delay systems with a particular attention on control problems of large scale or infinite-dimensional systems with delays. The second part of the book is dedicated to the use of time-delay models for the analysis and design of Networked Control Systems. The third part of the book focuses on the analysis and design of systems with asynchronous sampling intervals which occur in Networked Control Systems. The last part of the book exposes several contributions dealing with the design of cooperative control and observation laws for networked control systems. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field of control theory, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

This edited book aims at presenting current research activities in the field of robust variable-structure systems. The scope equally comprises highlighting novel methodological aspects as well as presenting the use of variable-structure techniques in industrial applications including their efficient implementation on hardware for real-time control. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of control theory and nonlinear dynamics but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Working in the fractional Laplace framework, this book provides models and theorems related to nonlocal diffusion phenomena. In addition to a simple probabilistic interpretation, some applications to water waves, crystal dislocations, nonlocal phase transitions, nonlocal minimal surfaces and Schroedinger equations are given. Furthermore, an example of an s-harmonic function, its harmonic extension and some insight into a fractional version of a classical conjecture due to De Giorgi are presented. Although the aim is primarily to gather some introductory material concerning applications of the fractional Laplacian, some of the proofs and results are new. The work is entirely self-contained, and readers who wish to pursue related subjects of interest are invited to consult the rich bibliography for guidance.