34 research outputs found

    Einstein's model of "the movement of small particles in a stationary liquid" revisited: finite propagation speed

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    The aforementioned celebrated model, though a breakthrough in Stochastic processes and a great step toward the construction of the Brownian motion, leads to a paradox: infinite propagation speed and violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. We adapt the model by assuming the diffusion matrix is dependent on the concentration of particles, rather than constant it was up to Einstein, and prove a finite propagation speed under the assumption of a qualified decrease of the diffusion for small concentrations. The method involves a nonlinear degenerated parabolic PDE in divergent form, a parabolic Sobolev-type inequality, and the Ladyzhenskaya-Ural’tseva iteration lemma

    Kolmogorov equations in infinite dimensions: Well-posedness and regularity of solutions, with applications to stochastic generalized Burgers equations

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    We develop a new method to uniquely solve a large class of heat equations, so-called Kolmogorov equations in infinitely many variables. The equations are analyzed in spaces of sequentially weakly continuous functions weighted by proper (Lyapunov type) functions. This way for the first time the solutions are constructed everywhere without exceptional sets for equations with possibly nonlocally Lipschitz drifts. Apart from general analytic interest, the main motivation is to apply this to uniquely solve martingale problems in the sense of Stroock--Varadhan given by stochastic partial differential equations from hydrodynamics, such as the stochastic Navier--Stokes equations. In this paper this is done in the case of the stochastic generalized Burgers equation. Uniqueness is shown in the sense of Markov flows.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117905000000666 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

    Gradient estimates for degenerate quasi-linear parabolic equations

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    For a general class of divergence type quasi-linear degenerate parabolic equations with differentiable structure and lower order coefficients form bounded with respect to the Laplacian we obtain LqL^q-estimates for the gradients of solutions, and for the lower order coefficients from a Kato-type class we show that the solutions are Lipschitz continuous with respect to the space variable

    A critical phenomenon for sublinear elliptic equations in cone-like domains

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    We study positive supersolutions to an elliptic equation (∗)(*): −Δu=c∣x∣−sup-\Delta u=c|x|^{-s}u^p, p,s∈Rp,s\in\bf R in cone-like domains in RN\bf R^N (N≥2N\ge 2). We prove that in the sublinear case p<1p<1 there exists a critical exponent p∗<1p_*<1 such that equation (∗)(*) has a positive supersolution if and only if −∞<p<p∗-\infty<p<p_*. The value of p∗p_* is determined explicitly by ss and the geometry of the cone.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
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