Adrian Muntean - Böcker

A Course in Homogenization-Based Techniques focuses on providing practical insights into select mathematical techniques for multiscale problems, with a close eye on real-world applications. Supported by examples and exercises chosen for their ability to serve as tools illustrating underlying theories — much like appetizers designed to spark further curiosity — this textbook explores the "why" just as much as it explains the "how" of multiscale modeling. It encourages readers to pose their own questions and guides them in approaching this widely applicable and deeply valuable field. Asymptotic analysis — in particular homogenization-based techniques — can offer powerful approximate models and concrete expressions for constitutive laws that bridge the gap between microscopic and macroscopic scales for endless real-world scenarios. Understanding how to couple these scales correctly allows one to unlock entirely new interpretations of otherwise inaccessible microscopic data by linking it to macroscopic experimental observations.Learning to use multiscale modeling in this way opens up a world of possibilities and introduces new dimensions of research to even experienced scientists. For this reason, this textbook seeks not only to train master's and PhD students of applied mathematics in techniques that can be both relevant for their education and of practical importance to their careers, but also to engage with the broader scientific community by enhancing the general mathematical literacy of scientists in the natural sciences and engineering.

This book develops continuum modeling skills and approaches the topic from three sides: (1) derivation of global integral laws together with the associated local differential equations, (2) design of constitutive laws and (3) modeling boundary processes.

This book is the offspring of a summer school school “Macroscopic andlarge scalephenomena: coarse graining, mean field limits and ergodicity”, which washeld in 2012 at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. The focus lies onmathematically rigorous methods for multiscale problems of physical origins.Each of the four book chapters is based on a set of lectures deliveredat the school, yet all authors have expanded and refined their contributions. Francois Golsedelivers a chapter on the dynamics of large particle systems in the mean fieldlimit and surveys the most significant tools and methods to establish suchlimits with mathematical rigor. Golse discusses in depth a variety of examples,including Vlasov--Poisson and Vlasov--Maxwell systems. Lucia Scardia focuseson the rigorous derivation of macroscopic models using $\Gamma$-convergence, amore recent variational method, which has proved very powerful for problems inmaterial science. Scardia illustrates this by various basic examples and a moreadvanced case study from dislocation theory.Alexander Mielke'scontribution focuses on the multiscale modeling and rigorous analysis ofgeneralized gradient systems through the new concept of evolutionary$\Gamma$-convergence. Numerous evocative examples are given, e.g., relating toperiodic homogenization and the passage from viscous to dry friction.Martin Göll and EvgenyVerbitskiy conclude this volume, taking a dynamical systems and ergodic theoryviewpoint. They review recent developments in the study of homoclinic pointsfor certain discrete dynamical systems, relating to particle systems viaergodic properties of lattices configurations.