arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Alberto Valli.
In this note we devise and analyse well-posed variational formulations and operator theoretical methods for boundary value problems associated to the biharmonic operator. Of particular interest are Neumann type and over- and underdetermined (maximal and minimal) boundary value problems.
Magnetic helicity is a conserved quantity of ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) that is related to the topology of the magnetic field, and is widely studied in both laboratory and astrophysical plasmas. When the magnetic field has a non-trivial normal component on the boundary of the domain, the classical definition of helicity must be replaced by relative magnetic helicity. The purpose of this work is to review the various definitions of relative helicity and to show that they have a common origin - a general definition of relative helicity in multiply connected domains. We show that this general definition is both gauge-invariant and is conserved in time under ideal MHD, subject only to closed and line-tied boundary conditions. Other, more specific, formulae for relative helicity, that are used frequently in the literature, are shown to follow from the general expression by imposing extra conditions on the magnetic field or its vector potential.
In this note we devise and analyze a well-posed variational formulation of the Neumann boundary value problem associated to the biharmonic operator $\Delta^2$. An alternative formulation as a system of two Poisson problems for the Laplace operator $\Delta$ is also derived.
In this Letter we extend the proof, by Faraco and Lindberg, of Taylor's conjecture in multiply connected domains to cover arbitrary vector potentials and remove the need to impose conditions on the magnetic field due to gauge invariance. This extension allows us to treat general magnetic fields in closed domains that are important in laboratory plasmas and brings closure to a problem that has been open for almost 50 years.
Magnetic helicity is a fundamental quantity of magnetohydrodynamics that carries topological information about the magnetic field. By `topological information', we usually refer to the linkage of magnetic field lines. For domains that are not simply connected, however, helicity also depends on the topology of the domain. In this paper, we expand the standard definition of magnetic helicity in simply connected domains to multiply connected domains in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of arbitrary topology. We also discuss how using the classic Biot-Savart operator simplifies the expression for helicity and how domain topology affects the physical interpretation of helicity.
We introduce and analyze a discontinuous Galerkin method for a time-harmonic eddy current problem formulated in terms of the magnetic field. The scheme is obtained by putting together a DG method for the approximation of the vector field variable representing the magnetic field in the conductor and a DG method for the Laplace equation whose solution is a scalar magnetic potential in the insulator. The transmission conditions linking the two problems are taken into account weakly in the global discontinuous Galerkin scheme. We prove that the numerical method is uniformly stable and obtain quasi-optimal error estimates in the DG-energy norm.
We introduce and analyze a discontinuous Galerkin FEM/BEM method for a time-harmonic eddy current problem written in terms of the magnetic field. We use nonconforming N\'ed\'elec finite elements on a partition of the interior domain coupled with continuous boundary elements on the transmission interface. We prove quasi-optimal error estimates in the energy norm.
New variational formulations are devised for the curl--div system, and the corresponding finite element approximations are shown to converge. Curl--free and divergence--free finite elements are employed for discretizing the problem.