A new variational method with SPBC and many stable choreographic solutions of the Newtonian 4-body problem

After the existence proof of the first remarkably stable simple choreographic motion-- the figure eight of the planar three-body problem by Chenciner and Montgomery in 2000, a great number of simple choreographic solutions have been discovered numerically but very few of them have rigorous existence proofs and none of them are stable. Most important to astronomy are stable periodic solutions which might actually be seen in some stellar system. A question for simple choreographic solutions on $n$-body problems naturally arises: Are there any other stable simple choreographic solutions except the figure eight? In this paper, we prove the existence of infinitely many simple choreographic solutions in the classical Newtonian 4-body problem by developing a new variational method with structural prescribed boundary conditions (SPBC). Surprisingly, a family of choreographic orbits of this type are all linearly stable. Among the many stable simple choreographic orbits, the most extraordinary one is the stable star pentagon choreographic solution. The star pentagon is assembled out of four pieces of curves which are obtained by minimizing the Lagrangian action functional over the SPBC. We also prove the existence of infinitely many double choreographic periodic solutions, infinitely many non-choreographic periodic solutions and uncountably many quasi-periodic solutions. Each type of periodic solutions have many stable solutions and possibly infinitely many stable solutions.Comment: Total 26 pages including 5 pages of figures and references, 12 figure

The Dirichlet Problem for Curvature Equations in Riemannian Manifolds

We prove the existence of classical solutions to the Dirichlet problem for a class of fully nonlinear elliptic equations of curvature type on Riemannian manifolds. We also derive new second derivative boundary estimates which allows us to extend some of the existence theorems of Caffarelli, Nirenberg and Spruck [4] and Ivochkina, Trundinger and Lin [19] to more general curvature functions and less convex domains.Comment: 32 pages, no figures. Final version. Paper accepted to publication in Indiana University Mathematics Journa

Initial boundary value problems for Einstein's field equations and geometric uniqueness

While there exist now formulations of initial boundary value problems for Einstein's field equations which are well posed and preserve constraints and gauge conditions, the question of geometric uniqueness remains unresolved. For two different approaches we discuss how this difficulty arises under general assumptions. So far it is not known whether it can be overcome without imposing conditions on the geometry of the boundary. We point out a natural and important class of initial boundary value problems which may offer possibilities to arrive at a fully covariant formulation.Comment: 19 page

Starshaped locally convex hypersurfaces with prescribed curvature and boundary

In this paper we find strictly locally convex hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with prescribed curvature and boundary. The main result is that if the given data admits a strictly locally convex radial graph as a subsolution, we can find a radial graph realizing the prescribed curvature and boundary. As an application we show any smooth domain on the boundary of a compact strictly convex body can be deformed to a smooth hypersurface with the same boundary (inside the convex body) and realizing any prescribed curvature function smaller than the curvature of the body.Comment: 24 pages. References updated. Published in The Journal of Geometric Analysi