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Anna L. Mazzucato

Publications and source records attributed to Anna L. Mazzucato.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Nonlinear Instability in the 2D Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation

In this paper we analyze the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation (KSE), a model of flame-front propagation, on a two-dimensional square torus of arbitrary size $2 L$ with $L > π$. In this case, the linearized equation at the origin admits a finite number of growing modes, which corresponds to the positive eigenvalues of the linear operator $- Δ^2 - Δ$. The problem of analyzing the long-time behavior of solutions of the 2D KSE in two spatial dimensions remains largely open; the only global existence results are for sufficiently small tori, or for sufficiently anisotropic and thin domains, due to the lack of good a priori estimates. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the instability around growing modes at the nonlinear level. More precisely, we consider the maximal growing mode $λ_0$ and we show that there is a finite dimensional manifold of initial data of size $\varepsilon$ arbitrarily small such that the corresponding solutions become of size $O(1)$ over a time-scale of order ${\rm log}(\varepsilon^{- 1})$. The proof is based on several ingredients such as a sharp quantitative construction of an approximate solution bifurcating from the maximal linearly growing mode, a fixed point argument with exponential weights to construct local in time solutions, and a continuation argument based on sharp energy estimates and para-differential calculus.

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arXiv2026

Phase separation for the 2D Cahn-Hilliard equation with a background shear flow

We consider the Cahn-Hilliard equation, which models phase separation in binary fluids, on the two-dimen\-sional torus in the presence of advection by a given background shear flow, satisfying certain conditions and of sufficiently large amplitude. By exploiting the resulting enhanced dissipation for the linearized operator, we prove that, with well-prepared data, the solution converges asymptotically at large times to the solution of a one-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation, obtained by projecting the full equation in the direction orthogonal to the shear in a suitable sense. This result rigorously justified the observed phenomenon of striation in the concentration field.

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arXiv2025

Pseudomeasure distributions for nonseparable, nonlocal mean field games

For a number of important mean field games models, the Hamiltonian is non-local and not additively separable. This means that the distribution of agents appears in the Hamiltonian only in an integral over the whole spatial domain. For mean field games with a class of such Hamiltonians, we prove existence of solutions for the mean field games system of partial differential equations, allowing pseudomeasure data for the distribution of agents. Specifically, this allows the initial distribution of agents to be a sum of Dirac masses. The existence theorem requires a smallness condition on the size of the terminal data for the value function (or, alternatively, on the size of the Hamiltonian); no smallness condition on the size of the initial data or on the size of the time horizon is required. We also prove uniqueness and continuous dependence results under the same type of smallness conditions. We prove continuous dependence under two complementary hypotheses on the initial data: strong convergence of a sequence of pseudomeasures, and weak-$*$ convergence of a sequence of bounded measures.

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arXiv2025

On the vanishing viscosity limit for incompressible flows with inflow/outflow boundary conditions

We study the vanishing viscosity limit for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) in a general bounded domain with inflow-outflow boundary conditions. Extending the work of Gie, Hamouda, and Temam ( Netw. Heterog. Media 7, 2012) and also of Lombardo and Sammartino (SIAM J. Math. Anal. 33, 2001), we allow for a general injection and suction angle, as long as it is bounded away from zero. We rigorously establish the convergence of NSE solutions to those of the Euler equations (EE) as viscosity vanishes in the energy norm. We prove interior convergence in both the $L^2$ and the Sobolev $H^1$ norms at the same rates as in the case of injection/suction normal to the boundary. The proof relies on the construction of boundary layer correctors via Prandtl-type equations and a higher-order asymptotic expansion that improves the convergence rate.

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arXiv2025

Energy dissipation near the outflow boundary in the vanishing viscosity limit

We consider the incompressible Navier-Stokes and Euler equations in a bounded domain with non-characteristic boundary condition, and study the energy dissipation near the outflow boundary in the zero-viscosity limit. We show that in a general setting, the energy dissipation rate is proportional to $\bar U \bar V ^2$, where $\bar U$ is the strength of the suction and $\bar V$ is the tangential component of the difference between the Euler and the Navier-Stokes solutions on the outflow boundary. Moreover, we show that the enstrophy within a layer of order $ν/ \bar U$ is comparable with the total enstrophy. The rate of enstrophy production near the boundary is inversely proportional to $ν$.

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arXiv2025

Dislocations in a layered elastic medium with applications to fault detection

We consider a model for elastic dislocations in geophysics. We model a portion of the Earth's crust as a bounded, inhomogeneous elastic body with a buried fault surface, along which slip occurs. We prove well-posedness of the resulting mixed-boundary-value-transmission problem, assuming only bounded elastic moduli. We establish uniqueness in the inverse problem of determining the fault surface and the slip from a unique measurement of the displacement on an open patch at the surface, assuming in addition that the Earth's crust is an isotropic, layered medium with Lamé coefficients piecewise Lipschitz on a known partition and that the fault surface is a graph with respect to an arbitrary coordinate system. These results substantially extend those of the authors in {Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.} {\bf 263} (2020), n. 1, 71--111.

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arXiv2025

Enhanced dissipation by advection and applications to PDEs

This survey provides a concise yet comprehensive overview on enhanced dissipation phenomena, transitioning seamlessly from the physical principles underlying the interplay between advection and diffusion to their rigorous mathematical formulation and analysis. The discussion begins with the standard theory of enhanced dissipation, highlighting key mechanisms and results, and progresses to its applications in notable nonlinear PDEs such as the Cahn-Hilliard and Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equations.

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arXiv2024

The 3D Euler equations with inflow, outflow and vorticity boundary conditions

The 3D incompressible Euler equations in a bounded domain are most often supplemented with impermeable boundary conditions, which constrain the fluid to neither enter nor leave the domain. We establish well-posedness with inflow, outflow of velocity when either the full value of the velocity is specified on inflow, or only the normal component is specified along with the vorticity (and an additional constraint). We derive compatibility conditions to obtain regularity in a Hölder space with prescribed arbitrary index, and allow multiply connected domains. Our results apply as well to impermeable boundaries, establishing higher regularity of solutions in Hölder spaces.

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arXiv2023

The linearized 3D Euler equations with inflow, outflow

In 1983, Antontsev, Kazhikhov, and Monakhov published a proof of the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the 3D Euler equations in which on certain inflow boundary components fluid is forced into the domain while on other outflow components fluid is drawn out of the domain. A key tool they used was the linearized Euler equations in vorticity form. We extend their result on the linearized problem to multiply connected domains and establish compatibility conditions on the initial data that allow higher regularity solutions.

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arXiv2022

Growth of Sobolev norms and loss of regularity in transport equations

We consider transport of a passive scalar advected by an irregular divergence free vector field. Given any non-constant initial data $\bar ρ\in H^1_\text{loc}({\mathbb R}^d)$, $d\geq 2$, we construct a divergence free advecting velocity field $v$ (depending on $\bar ρ$) for which the unique weak solution to the transport equation does not belong to $H^1_\text{loc}({\mathbb R}^d)$ for any positive positive time. The velocity field $v$ is smooth, except at one point, controlled uniformly in time, and belongs to almost every Sobolev space $W^{s,p}$ that does not embed into the Lipschitz class. The velocity field $v$ is constructed by pulling back and rescaling an initial data dependent sequence of sine/cosine shear flows on the torus. This loss of regularity result complements that in [Ann. PDE, 5(1):Paper No. 9, 19, 2019].

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arXiv2021

Approximate Solutions to Second-Order Parabolic Equations: evolution systems and discretization

We study the discretization of a linear evolution partial differential equation when its Green function is known. We provide error estimates both for the spatial approximation and for the time stepping approximation. We show that, in fact, an approximation of the Green function is almost as good as the Green function itself. For suitable time-dependent parabolic equations, we explain how to obtain good, explicit approximations of the Green function using the Dyson-Taylor commutator method (DTCM) that we developed in J. Math. Phys. (2010). This approximation for short time, when combined with a bootstrap argument, gives an approximate solution on any fixed time interval within any prescribed tolerance.

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arXiv2021

Global solutions of the two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a linearly growing mode in each direction

In two spatial dimensions, there are very few global existence results for the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. The majority of the few results in the literature are strongly anisotropic, i.e. are results of thin-domain type. In the spatially periodic case, the dynamics of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation are in part governed by the size of the domain, as this determines how many linearly growing Fourier modes are present. The strongly anisotropic results allow linearly growing Fourier modes in only one of the spatial directions. We provide here the first proof of global solutions for the two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a linearly growing mode in both spatial directions. We develop a new method to this end, categorizing wavenumbers as low (linearly growing modes), intermediate (linearly decaying modes which serve as energy sinks for the low modes), and high (strongly linearly decaying modes). The low and intermediate modes are controlled by means of a Lyapunov function, while the high modes are controlled with operator estimates in function spaces based on the Wiener algebra.

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arXiv2021

Global Existence for the Two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a Shear Flow

We consider the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation (KSE) on the two-dimensional torus in the presence of advection by a given background shear flow. Under the assumption that the shear has a finite number of critical points and there are linearly growing modes only in the direction of the shear, we prove global existence of solutions with data in $L^2$, using a bootstrap argument. The initial data can be taken arbitrarily large.

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arXiv2020

Global existence for the two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with advection

We study the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation (KSE) in scalar form on the two-dimensional torus with and without advection by an incompressible vector field. We prove local existence of mild solutions for arbitrary data in L2. We then study the issue of global existence. We prove global existence for the KSE in the presence of advection for arbitrary data, provided the advecting velocity field v satisfies certain conditions that ensure the dissipation time of the associated hyperdiffusion-advection equation is sufficiently small. In the absence of advection, global existence can be shown only if the linearized operator does not admit any growing mode and for sufficiently small initial data.

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arXiv2019

Analysis of a model of elastic dislocations in geophysics

We analyze a mathematical model of elastic dislocations with applications to geophysics, where by an elastic dislocation we mean an open, oriented Lipschitz surface in the interior of an elastic solid, across which there is a discontinuity of the displacement. We model the Earth as an infinite, isotropic, inhomogeneous, elastic medium occupying a half space, and assume only Lipschitz continuity of the Lamé parameters. We study the well posedness of very weak solutions to the forward problem of determining the displacement by imposing traction-free boundary conditions at the surface, continuity of the traction and a given jump on the displacement across the fault. We employ suitable weighted Sobolev spaces for the analysis. We utilize the well posedness of the forward problem and unique-continuation arguments to establish uniqueness in the inverse problem of determining the dislocation surface and the displacement jump from measuring the displacement at the surface of the Earth. Uniqueness holds for tangential or normal jumps and under some geometric conditions on the surface.

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arXiv2019

Loss of regularity for the continuity equation with non-Lipschitz velocity field

We consider the Cauchy problem for the continuity equation in space dimension ${d \geq 2}$. We construct a divergence-free velocity field uniformly bounded in all Sobolev spaces $W^{1,p}$, for $1 \leq p<\infty$, and a smooth compactly supported initial datum such that the unique solution to the continuity equation with this initial datum and advecting field does not belong to any Sobolev space of positive fractional order at any positive time. We also construct velocity fields in $W^{r,p}$, with $r>1$, and solutions of the continuity equation with these velocities that exhibit some loss of regularity, as long as the Sobolev space $W^{r,p}$ does not embed in the space of Lipschitz functions. Our constructions are based on examples of optimal mixers from the companion paper "Exponential self-similar mixing by incompressible flows" (J. Amer. Math. Soc. 32 (2019), no. 2), and have been announced in "Exponential self-similar mixing and loss of regularity for continuity equations" (C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris, 352 (2014), no. 11).

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arXiv2018

Exponential self-similar mixing by incompressible flows

We study the problem of the optimal mixing of a passive scalar under the action of an incompressible flow in two space dimensions. The scalar solves the continuity equation with a divergence-free velocity field, which satisfies a bound in the Sobolev space $W^{s,p}$, where $s \geq 0$ and $1\leq p\leq \infty$. The mixing properties are given in terms of a characteristic length scale, called the mixing scale. We consider two notions of mixing scale, one functional, expressed in terms of the homogeneous Sobolev norm $\dot H^{-1}$, the other geometric, related to rearrangements of sets. We study rates of decay in time of both scales under self-similar mixing. For the case $s=1$ and $1 \leq p \leq \infty$ (including the case of Lipschitz continuous velocities, and the case of physical interest of enstrophy-constrained flows), we present examples of velocity fields and initial configurations for the scalar that saturate the exponential lower bound, established in previous works, on the time decay of both scales. We also present several consequences for the geometry of regular Lagrangian flows associated to Sobolev velocity fields.

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