Franco Giannessi - Böcker

This Volume contains the (refereed) papers presented at the 38th Conference of the School of Mathematics "G.Stampacchia" of the "E.Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture of Erice (Sicily), held in Memory ofG. Stampacchia and J.-L. Lions in the period June 20 - July 2003. The presence of participants from Countries has greatly contributed to the success of the meeting. The School of Mathematics was dedicated to Stampacchia, not only for his great mathematical achievements, but also because He founded it. The core of the Conference has been the various features of the Variational Analysis and their motivations and applications to concrete problems. Variational Analysis encompasses a large area of modem Mathematics, such as the classical Calculus of Variations, the theories of perturbation, approximation, subgradient, subderivates, set convergence and Variational Inequalities, and all these topics have been deeply and intensely dealt during the Conference. In particular, Variational Inequalities, which have been initiated by Stampacchia, inspired by Signorini Problem and the related work of G. Fichera, have offered a very great possibility of applications to several fundamental problems of Mathematical Physics, Engineering, Statistics and Economics. The pioneer work of Stampacchia and Lions can be considered as the basic kernel around which Variational Analysis is going to be outlined and constructed. The Conference has dealt with both finite and infinite dimensional analysis, showing that to carry on these two aspects disjointly is unsuitable for both.

Over the last twenty years, Professor Franco Giannessi, a highly respected researcher, has been working on an approach to optimization theory based on image space analysis. His theory has been elaborated by many other researchers in a wealth of papers. Constrained Optimization and Image Space Analysis unites his results and presents optimization theory and variational inequalities in their light.It presents a new approach to the theory of constrained extremum problems, including Mathematical Programming, Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control Problems. Such an approach unifies the several branches: Optimality Conditions, Duality, Penalizations, Vector Problems, Variational Inequalities and Complementarity Problems. The applications benefit from a unified theory.

The aim of this book is to cover the three fundamental aspects of research in equilibrium problems: the statement problem and its formulation using mainly variational methods; its theoretical solution by means of classical and new variational tools; and the calculus of solutions and applications in concrete cases. The book shows how many equilibrium problems follow a general law (the so-called user equilibrium condition). Such law allows us to express the problem in terms of variational inequalities. Variational inequalities provide a powerful methodology, by which existence and calculation of the solution can be obtained.

Over the last twenty years, Professor Franco Giannessi, a highly respected researcher, has been working on an approach to optimization theory based on image space analysis. His theory has been elaborated by many other researchers in a wealth of papers. Constrained Optimization and Image Space Analysis unites his results and presents optimization theory and variational inequalities in their light.It presents a new approach to the theory of constrained extremum problems, including Mathematical Programming, Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control Problems. Such an approach unifies the several branches: Optimality Conditions, Duality, Penalizations, Vector Problems, Variational Inequalities and Complementarity Problems. The applications benefit from a unified theory.

In the fifties and sixties, several real problems, old and new, especially in Physics, Mechanics, Fluidodynamics, Structural Engi- neering, have shown the need of new mathematical models for study- ing the equilibrium of a system. This has led to the formulation of Variational Inequalities (by G. Stampacchia), and to the develop- ment of Complementarity Systems (by W.S. Dorn, G.B. Dantzig, R.W. Cottle, O.L. Mangasarian et al.) with important applications in the elasto-plastic field (initiated by G. Maier). The great advan- tage of these models is that the equilibrium is not necessarily the extremum of functional, like energy, so that no such functional must be supposed to exist. In the same decades, in some fields like Control Theory, Net- works, Industrial Systems, Logistics, Management Science, there has been a strong request of mathmatical models for optimizing situa- tions where there are concurrent objectives, so that Vector Optimiza- tion (initiated by W. Pareto) has received new impetus. With regard to equilibrium problems, Vector Optimization has the above - mentioned drawback of being obliged to assume the exis- tence of a (vector) functional.Therefore, at the end of the seventies the study of Vector Variational Inequalities began with the scope of exploiting the advantages of both variational and vector models. This volume puts together most of the recent mathematical results in Vector Variational Inequalities with the purpose of contributing to further research.