This paper is concerned with analyzing a class of fractional calculus of variations problems and their associated Euler-Lagrange (fractional differential) equations. Unlike the existing fractional calculus of variations which is based on the classical notion of fractional derivatives, the fractional calculus of variations considered in this paper is based on a newly developed notion of weak fractional derivatives and their associated fractional order Sobolev spaces. Since fractional derivatives are direction-dependent, using one-sided fractional derivatives and their combinations leads to new types of calculus of variations and fractional differential equations as well as nonstandard Neumann boundary operators. The primary objective of this paper is to establish the well-posedness and regularities for a class of fractional calculus of variations problems and their Euler-Lagrange (fractional differential) equations. This is achieved first for one-sided Dirichlet energy functionals which lead to one-sided fractional Laplace equations, then for more general energy functionals which give rise to more general fractional differential equations.
A complete solution to the multiplier version of the inverse problem of the calculus of variations is given for a class of hyperbolic systems of second-order partial differential equations in two independent variables. The necessary and sufficient algebraic and differential conditions for the existence of a variational multiplier are derived. It is shown that the number of independent variational multipliers is determined by the nullity of a completely algebraic system of equations associated to the given system of partial differential equations. An algorithm for solving the inverse problem is demonstrated on several examples. Systems of second-order partial differential equations in two independent and dependent variables are studied and systems which have more than one variational formulation are classified up to contact equivalence.
New third- and fourth-order Lagrangian hierarchies are derived in this paper. The free coefficients in the leading terms satisfy the most general differential geometric criteria currently known for the existence of a variational formulation, as derived by solution of the full inverse problem of the Calculus of Variations for scalar sixth- and eighth-order ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The Lagrangians obtained here have greater freedom since they require conditions only on individual coefficients. In particular, they contain four arbitrary functions, so that some investigations based on the existing general criteria for a variational representation are particular cases of our families of models. The variational equations resulting from our generalized Lagrangians may also represent traveling waves of various nonlinear evolution equations, some of which recover known physical models. For a typical member of our generalized variational ODEs, families of regular and embedded solitary waves are also derived in appropriate parameter regimes. As usual, the embedded solitons are found to occur only on isolated curves in the part of parameter space where they exist.
In the paper we study applications of integral transforms composition method (ITCM) for obtaining transmutations via integral transforms. It is possible to derive wide range of transmutation operators by this method. Classical integral transforms are involved in the integral transforms composition method (ITCM) as basic blocks, among them are Fourier, sine and cosine-Fourier, Hankel, Mellin, Laplace and some generalized transforms. The ITCM and transmutations obtaining by it are applied to deriving connection formulas for solutions of singular differential equations and more simple non-singular ones. We consider well-known classes of singular differential equations with Bessel operators, such as classical and generalized Euler-Poisson-Darboux equation and the generalized radiation problem of A.Weinstein. Methods of this paper are applied to more general linear partial differential equations with Bessel operators, such as multivariate Bessel-type equations, GASPT (Generalized Axially Symmetric Potential Theory) equations of A.Weinstein, Bessel-type generalized wave equations with variable coefficients,ultra B-hyperbolic equations and others. So with many results and examples the mai
The linearization of complex ordinary differential equations is studied by extending Lie's criteria for linearizability to complex functions of complex variables. It is shown that the linearization of complex ordinary differential equations implies the linearizability of systems of partial differential equations corresponding to those complex ordinary differential equations. The invertible complex transformations can be used to obtain invertible real transformations that map a system of nonlinear partial differential equations into a system of linear partial differential equation. Explicit invariant criteria are given that provide procedures for writing down the solutions of the linearized equations. A few non-trivial examples are mentioned.
It is proved that the members of the Riccati hierarchy, the so-called Riccati chain equations, can be considered as particular cases of projective Riccati equations, which greatly simplifies the study of the Riccati hierarchy. This also allows us to characterize Riccati chain equations geometrically in terms of the projective vector fields of a flat Riemannian metric and to easily derive their associated superposition rules. Next, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions under which it is possible to map second-order Riccati chain equations into conformal Riccati equations through a local diffeomorphism. This fact can be used to determine superposition rules for particular higher-order Riccati chain equations which depend on fewer particular solutions than in the general case. Therefore, we analyze the properties of Euclidean, hyperbolic and projective vector fields on the plane in detail. Finally, the use of contact transformations enables us to apply the derived results to the study of certain integrable partial differential equations, such as the Kaup-Kupershmidt and Sawada-Kotera equations.
We provide a general framework for the stability of solutions to stochastic partial differential equations with respect to perturbations of the drift. More precisely, we consider stochastic partial differential equations with drift given as the subdifferential of a convex function and prove continuous dependence of the solutions with regard to random Mosco convergence of the convex potentials. In particular, we identify the concept of stochastic variational inequalities (SVI) as a well-suited framework to study such stability properties. The generality of the developed framework is then laid out by deducing Trotter type and homogenization results for stochastic fast diffusion and stochastic singular p-Laplace equations. In addition, we provide an SVI treatment for stochastic nonlocal p-Laplace equations and prove their convergence to the respective local models.
In this paper we present the theoretical framework needed to justify the use of a kernel-based collocation method (meshfree approximation method) to estimate the solution of high-dimensional stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs). Using an implicit time stepping scheme, we transform stochastic parabolic equations into stochastic elliptic equations. Our main attention is concentrated on the numerical solution of the elliptic equations at each time step. The estimator of the solution of the elliptic equations is given as a linear combination of reproducing kernels derived from the differential and boundary operators of the SPDE centered at collocation points to be chosen by the user. The random expansion coefficients are computed by solving a random system of linear equations. Numerical experiments demonstrate the feasibility of the method.
While large language models are primarily used on natural language tasks, they have also shown great promise when adapted to new modalities, e.g., for scientific machine learning tasks. Most proposed approaches for such cross-modal adaptation of language models focus on encoder-only transformer model architectures, despite decoder-only architectures being far more popular for language tasks in recent years, and being trained at much larger scales. This raises the question of how model architecture affects cross-modal adaptation approaches, and whether we can leverage the success of decoder-only models. In this paper, we systematically compare encoder-only and decoder-only language models on cross-modal adaptation for time-dependent simulation tasks based on partial differential equations (PDEs). We find that decoder-only models are far worse than encoder-only models, when existing approaches are applied unmodified. In contrast to several other domains, scaling decoder-only models also does not help. To enhance the performance of decoder-only models in this context, we introduce two novel approaches that mimic bidirectionality, Parallel Flipping and Sequence Doubling. Both our metho
We establish Schauder a priori estimates and regularity for solutions to a class of boundary-degenerate elliptic linear second-order partial differential equations. Furthermore, given a smooth source function, we prove regularity of solutions up to the portion of the boundary where the operator is degenerate. Degenerate-elliptic operators of the kind described in our article appear in a diverse range of applications, including as generators of affine diffusion processes employed in stochastic volatility models in mathematical finance, generators of diffusion processes arising in mathematical biology, and the study of porous media.
Second order partial differential equations which describe spherical surfaces (ss) or pseudospherical surfaces (pss) are considered. These equations are equivalent to the structure equations of a metric with Gaussian curvature $K = 1$ or $K = -1$, respectively, and they can be seen as the compatibility condition of an associated su(2)-valued or sl(2, R)-valued linear problem, also referred to as a zero curvature representation. Under certain assumptions we give a complete and explicit classiffcation of equations of the form $z_{tt} = A(z, z_x , z_t) z_{xx} + B(z, z_x , z_t ) z_{xt} + C(z, z_x , z_t)$ describing pss or ss, in terms of some arbitrary differentiable functions. Several examples of such equations are provided by choosing the arbitrary functions. In particular, well known equations which describe pseudospherical surfaces, such as the short pulse and the constant astigmatism equations, as well as their generalizations and their spherical analogues are included in the paper.
The calculus of variations is a field of mathematical analysis born in 1687 with Newton's problem of minimal resistance, which is concerned with the maxima or minima of integral functionals. Finding the solution of such problems leads to solving the associated Euler-Lagrange equations. The subject has found many applications over the centuries, e.g., in physics, economics, engineering and biology. Up to this moment, however, the theory of the calculus of variations has been confined to Newton's approach to calculus. As in many applications negative values of admissible functions are not physically plausible, we propose here to develop an alternative calculus of variations based on the non-Newtonian approach first introduced by Grossman and Katz in the period between 1967 and 1970, which provides a calculus defined, from the very beginning, for positive real numbers only, and it is based on a (non-Newtonian) derivative that permits one to compare relative changes between a dependent positive variable and an independent variable that is also positive. In this way, the non-Newtonian calculus of variations we introduce here provides a natural framework for problems involving functions
This course is intended as an introduction to the analysis of elliptic partial differential equations. The objective is to provide a large overview of the different aspects of elliptic partial differential equations and their modern treatment. Besides variational and Schauder methods we study the unique continuation property and the stability for Cauchy problems. The derivation of the unique continuation property and the stability for Cauchy problems relies on a Carleman inequality. This inequality is efficient to establish three-ball type inequalities which are the main tool in the continuation argument. We know that historically a central role in the analysis of partial differential equations is played by their fundamental solutions. We added an appendix dealing with the construction of a fundamental solution by the so-called Levi parametrix method. We tried as much as possible to render this course self-contained. Moreover each chapter contains many exercices and problems. We have provided detailed solutions of these exercises and problems. The most parts of this course consist in an enhanced version of courses given by the author in both undergraduate and graduate levels during
Foundation models for partial differential equations (PDEs) have emerged as powerful surrogates pre-trained on diverse physical systems, but adapting them to new downstream tasks remains challenging due to limited task-specific data and distribution shifts. While fine-tuning has proven transformative in natural language processing, best practices for adapting PDE foundation models remain underexplored. Although physics-informed training has successfully trained accurate solvers across a wide range of PDE problems, its potential for fine-tuning data-based foundation models has not been systematically studied. In this work, we introduce a physics-informed fine-tuning framework that adapts pre-trained PDE foundation models by incorporating physical constraints (PDE residuals and boundary conditions) directly into the fine-tuning objective. This enables effective adaptation in data-scarce regimes while promoting physical consistency. We evaluate our method on a downstream task composed of an unseen PDE class and compare it with data-driven finetuning counterparts. Our results demonstrate that physics-informed fine-tuning achieves competitive accuracy without requiring PDE solutions for
In this paper, we study interior estimates for solutions to linearized Monge-Ampère equations in divergence form with drift terms and the right-hand side containing the divergence of a bounded vector field. Equations of this type appear in the study of semigeostrophic equations in meteorology and the solvability of singular Abreu equations in the calculus of variations with a convexity constraint. We prove an interior Harnack inequality and Hölder estimates for solutions to equations of this type in two dimensions, and under an integrability assumption on the Hessian matrix of the Monge-Ampère potential in higher dimensions. Our results extend those of Le (Analysis of Monge-Ampère equations, Graduate Studies in Mathematics, vol.240, American Mathematical Society, 2024) to equations with drift terms.
The paper is devoted to an analysis of optimality conditions for nonsmooth multidimensional problems of the calculus of variations with various types of constraints, such as additional constraints at the boundary and isoperimetric constraints. To derive optimality conditions, we study generalised concepts of differentiability of nonsmooth functions called codifferentiability and quasidifferentiability. Under some natural and easily verifiable assumptions we prove that a nonsmooth integral functional defined on the Sobolev space is continuously codifferentiable and compute its codifferential and quasidifferential. Then we apply general optimality conditions for nonsmooth optimisation problems in Banach spaces to obtain optimality conditions for nonsmooth problems of the calculus of variations. Through a series of simple examples we demonstrate that our optimality conditions are sometimes better than existing ones in terms of various subdifferentials, in the sense that our optimality conditions can detect the non-optimality of a given point, when subdifferential-based optimality conditions fail to disqualify this point as non-optimal.
We prove the existence of random dynamical systems and random attractors for a large class of locally monotone stochastic partial differential equations perturbed by additive Lévy noise. The main result is applicable to various types of SPDE such as stochastic Burgers type equations, stochastic 2D Navier-Stokes equations, the stochastic 3D Leray-$α$ model, stochastic power law fluids, the stochastic Ladyzhenskaya model, stochastic Cahn-Hilliard type equations, stochastic Kuramoto-Sivashinsky type equations, stochastic porous media equations and stochastic $p$-Laplace equations.
In the inverse problem of the calculus of variations one is asked to find a Lagrangian and a multiplier so that a given differential equation, after multiplying with the multiplier, becomes the Euler--Lagrange equation for the Lagrangian. An answer to this problem for the case of a scalar ordinary differential equation of order $2n, n\geq 2,$ is proposed.
The central aim of this work is to understand rough differential equations on homogeneous spaces. We focus on the formal approach, by giving an explicit expansion of the solution at each point of the real line in terms of decorated planar forests. For this we develop the notion of planarly branched rough paths, following M. Gubinelli's branched rough paths. The definition is similar to the one in the flat case, the main difference being the replacement of the Butcher--Connes--Kreimer Hopf algebra of non-planar rooted forests by the Munthe-Kaas--Wright Hopf algebra of planar rooted forests. We show how the latter permits to handle rough differential equations on homogeneous spaces using planarly branched rough paths, the same way branched rough paths are used in the context of rough differential equations on finite-dimensional vector spaces. An analogue of T. Lyons' extension theorem is proven. Finally, under analyticity assumptions on the coefficients and when the Hölder index of the driving path is equal to one, we show convergence of the planar forest expansion in a small time interval.
This chapter presents some numerical methods to solve problems in the fractional calculus of variations and fractional optimal control. Although there are plenty of methods available in the literature, we concentrate mainly on approximating the fractional problem either by discretizing the fractional term or expanding the fractional derivatives as a series involving integer order derivatives. The former method, as a subclass of direct methods in the theory of calculus of variations, uses finite differences, Grunwald-Letnikov definition in this case, to discretize the fractional term. Any quadrature rule for integration, regarding the desired accuracy, is then used to discretize the whole problem including constraints. The final task in this method is to solve a static optimization problem to reach approximated values of the unknown functions on some mesh points. The latter method, however, approximates fractional problems by classical ones in which only derivatives of integer order are present. Precisely, two continuous approximations for fractional derivatives by series involving ordinary derivatives are introduced. Local upper bounds for truncation errors are provided and, throug