We study a model of ferromagnetic material with hysteresis effects. The magnetic moment behaviour is described by the nonlinear Landau–Lifshitz equation with an additional term modelling the hysteresis. This term takes the form of a maximal monotone operator acting on the time derivative of the magnetic moment. In our model, it is approximated via a relaxing heat equation. For this relaxed model we prove local existence of regular solutions.

We construct multi-bump nodal solutions of the elliptic equation

in , when μ is large, under appropriate assumptions, for f superlinear and subcritical and such that the eigenvalues of the associated linearized operator on at zero, u ↦ u − λ(−Δ)−1(a+u), are positive. The solutions are of least energy in some Nehari-type set defined by imposing suitable conditions on orthogonal components of functions in .

We prove that for all x > 0, we have

with the best possible constants α = 0 and .

Let X be a Banach space. It is proved that an analogue of the Rubio de Francia square function estimate for partial sums of the Fourier series of X-valued functions holds true for all disjoint collections of subintervals of the set of integers of equal length and for all exponents p ≥ 2 if and only if the space X is a UMD space of type 2. The same criterion is obtained for the case of subintervals of the real line and Fourier integrals instead of Fourier series.

We consider a geometrically nonlinear model for crystal plasticity in two dimensions, with two active slip systems and rigid elasticity. We prove that the rank-1 convex envelope of the condensed energy density is obtained by infinite-order laminates, and express it explicitly via the 2F1 hypergeometric function. We also determine the polyconvex envelope, leading to upper and lower bounds on the quasiconvex envelope. The two bounds differ by less than 2%.

Let W be a finite reflection group acting orthogonally on ℝn, P be the Chevalley polynomial mapping determined by an integrity basis of the algebra of W-invariant polynomials, and h be the highest degree of the coordinate polynomials in P. Let r be a positive integer and [r/h] be the integer part of r/h. There exists a linear mapping such that f = F ∘ P, which is continuous for the natural Fréchet topologies. A general counter-example shows that this result is the best possible. The proof uses techniques of division by linear forms and a study of compensation phenomena. An extension to P−1(ℝn) of invariant formally holomorphic regular fields is needed.

Consider a scattering problem for the Dirac equation with a non-local term including the Hartree type, say the cubic convolution term. We show the existence of scattering operators for small initial data in the subcritical and critical Sobolev spaces.

We characterize the weighted weak-type inequalities with variable exponents for the maximal operator associated with an ergodic, invertible, measure-preserving transformation and prove the almost everywhere convergence of the ergodic averages for all functions in a variable Lebesgue space with a weight verifying a suitable condition.

We consider an inverse spectral problem for Sturm–Liouville boundary-value problems on a graph with formally self-adjoint boundary conditions at the nodes, where the given information is the M-matrix. Based on the authors' previous results, using Green's function, we prove that the poles of the M-matrix are at the eigenvalues of the associated boundary-value problem and are simple, located on the real axis, and that the residue at a pole is a negative semi-definite matrix with rank equal to the multiplicity of the eigenvalue. We define the so-called norming constants and relate them to the spectral measure and the M-matrix. This enables us to recover, from the M-matrix, the boundary conditions and the potential, up to a unitary equivalence for co-normal boundary conditions.

For a singularly perturbed nonlinear elliptic equation ε2Δu − V(x)u + up = 0, x ∈ ℝN, there are solutions concentrating around critical points of V with different energy scales with respect to small ε > 0. We combine the solutions when .

An n-vertex graph G is c-Ramsey if it contains neither a complete nor an empty induced subgraph of size greater than c log n. Erdős, Faudree and Sós conjectured that every c-Ramsey graph with n vertices contains Ω(n5/2) induced subgraphs, any two of which differ either in the number of vertices or in the number of edges, i.e., the number of distinct pairs (|V(H)|, |E(H)|), as H ranges over all induced subgraphs of G, is Ω(n5/2). We prove an Ω(n2.3693) lower bound.

The U-polynomial, the polychromate and the symmetric function generalization of the Tutte polynomial, due to Stanley, are known to be equivalent in the sense that the coefficients of any one of them can be obtained as a function of the coefficients of any other. The definition of each of these functions suggests a natural way in which to strengthen them, which also captures Tutte's universal V-function as a specialization. We show that the equivalence remains true for the strong functions, thus answering a question raised by Dominic Welsh.

Let G = G(n) be a randomly chosen k-edge-coloured k-regular graph with 2n vertices, where k = k(n). Such a graph can be obtained from a random set of k edge-disjoint perfect matchings of K2n. Let h = h(n) be a graph with m = m(n) edges such that m2 + mk = o(n). Using a switching argument, we find an asymptotic estimate of the expected number of subgraphs of G isomorphic to h. Isomorphisms may or may not respect the edge colouring, and other generalizations are also presented. Special attention is paid to matchings and cycles.

The results in this paper are essential to a forthcoming paper of McLeod in which an asymptotic estimate for the number of k-edge-coloured k-regular graphs for k = o(n5/6) is found.

A minor-closed class of graphs is addable if each excluded minor is 2-connected. We see that such a class of labelled graphs has smooth growth; and, for the random graph Rn sampled uniformly from the n-vertex graphs in , the fragment not in the giant component asymptotically has a simple ‘Boltzmann Poisson distribution’. In particular, as n → ∞ the probability that Rn is connected tends to 1/A(ρ), where A(x) is the exponential generating function for and ρ is its radius of convergence.

It is well known that, when normalized by n, the expected length of a longest common subsequence of d sequences of length n over an alphabet of size σ converges to a constant γσ,d. We disprove a speculation by Steele regarding a possible relation between γ2,d and γ2,2. In order to do that we also obtain some new lower bounds for γσ,d, when both σ and d are small integers.

Systems of polynomial equations over the complex or real numbers can be used to model combinatorial problems. In this way, a combinatorial problem is feasible (e.g., a graph is 3-colourable, Hamiltonian, etc.) if and only if a related system of polynomial equations has a solution.

For an infeasible polynomial system, the (complex) Hilbert Nullstellensatz gives a certificate that the associated combinatorial problem is infeasible. Thus, unless P = NP, there must exist an infinite sequence of infeasible instances of each hard combinatorial problem for which the minimum degree of a Hilbert Nullstellensatz certificate of the associated polynomial system grows.

In the first part of the paper, we show that the minimum degree of a Nullstellensatz certificate for the non-existence of a stable set of size greater than the stability number of the graph is the stability number of the graph. Moreover, such a certificate contains at least one term per stable set of G. In contrast, for non-3-colourability, we proved that the minimum degree of a Nullstellensatz certificate is at least four. Our efforts so far have only yielded graphs with Nullstellensatz certificates of precisely that degree.

In the second part of this paper, for the purpose of computation, we construct new polynomial encodings for the problems of finding in a graph its longest cycle, the largest planar subgraph, the edge-chromatic number, or the largest k-colourable subgraph. We include some applications to graph theory.

We perform the asymptotic enumeration of two classes of rooted maps on orientable surfaces: m-hypermaps and m-constellations. For m = 2 they correspond respectively to maps with even face degrees and bipartite maps. We obtain explicit asymptotic formulas for the number of such maps with any finite set of allowed face degrees.

Our proofs combine a bijective approach, generating series techniques related to lattice walks, and elementary algebraic graph theory.

A special case of our results implies former conjectures of Z. Gao.

The static compression between two smooth plates of an axisymmetric capsule or vesicle is investigated by means of asymptotic analysis. The governing equations of the vesicle are derived from thin-shell theory and involve a bending stiffness B, a shear modulus H, the unstressed vesicle radius a and a constant surface-area constraint. The sixth-order free-boundary problem obtained by a balance-of-forces approach is addressed in the limit when the dimensionless parameter C = Ha2/B is large and the plate displacements are small. When the plate displacement is of order aC−1/2, the vesicle undergoes a sub-critical buckling instability which is captured by leading-order asymptotics. Asymptotic linear and quadratic force–displacement relations for the pre- and post-buckled solutions are determined. The leading-order post-buckled solution is described by a simple fourth-order problem, exhibiting stress-focusing with stretching and bending confined to a narrow boundary layer. In contrast, in the pre-buckled state, stretching occurs over a larger length scale than bending. The results are in good qualitative agreement with numerical simulations for finite values of C.