Michael Plum - Böcker

It addresses classical inequalities related to means or to convexity as well as inequalities arising in the field of ordinary and partial differential equations, like Sobolev or Hardy-type inequalities, and inequalities occurring in geometrical contexts.

Inequalities arise as an essential component in various mathematical areas. Besides forming a highly important collection of tools, e.g. for proving analytic or stochastic theorems or for deriving error estimates in numerical mathematics, they constitute a challenging research field of their own. Inequalities also appear directly in mathematical models for applications in science, engineering, and economics.  This edited volume covers divers aspects of this fascinating field. It addresses classical inequalities related to means or to convexity as well as inequalities arising in the field of ordinary and partial differential equations, like Sobolev or Hardy-type inequalities, and inequalities occurring in geometrical contexts. Within the last five decades, the late Wolfgang Walter has made great contributions to the field of inequalities. His book on differential and integral inequalities was a real breakthrough in the 1970’s and has generated a vast variety of further research in this field. He also organized six of the seven “General Inequalities” Conferences held at Oberwolfach between 1976 and 1995, and co-edited their proceedings. He participated as an honorary member of the Scientific Committee in the “General Inequalities 8” conference in Hungary. As a recognition of his great achievements, this volume is dedicated to Wolfgang Walter’s memory. The “General Inequalities” meetings found their continuation in the “Conferences on Inequalities and Applications” which, so far, have been held twice in Hungary. This volume contains selected contributions of participants of the second conference which took place in Hajdúszoboszló in September 2010, as well as additional articles written upon invitation. These contributions reflect many theoretical and practical aspects in the field of inequalities, and will be useful for researchers and lecturers,as well as for students who want to familiarize themselves with the area.

Inequalities continue to play an essential role in mathematics. Perhaps, they form the last field comprehended and used by mathematicians in all areas of the discipline. Since the seminal work Inequalities (1934) by Hardy, Littlewood and Polya, mathematicians have laboured to extend and sharpen their classical inequalities. New inequalities are discovered every year, some for their intrinsic interest whilst others flow from results obtained in various branches of mathematics. The study of inequalities reflects the many and various aspects of mathematics. On one hand, there is the systematic search for the basic principles and the study of inequalities for their own sake. On the other hand, the subject is the source of ingenious ideas and methods that give rise to seemingly elementary but nevertheless serious and challenging problems. There are numerous applications in a wide variety of fields, from mathematical physics to biology and economics. This volume contains the contributions of the participants of the Conference on Inequalities and Applications held in Noszvaj (Hungary) in September 2007.It is conceived in the spirit of the preceding volumes of the General Inequalities meetings held in Oberwolfach from 1976 to 1995 in the sense that it not only contains the latest results presented by the participants, but it is also a useful reference book for both lecturers and research workers.The contributions reflect the ramification of general inequalities into many areas of mathematics and also present a synthesis of results in both theory and practice.

In the last decades, various mathematical problems have been solved by computer-assisted proofs, among them the Kepler conjecture, the existence of chaos, the existence of the Lorenz attractor, the famous four-color problem, and more. In many cases, computer-assisted proofs have the remarkable advantage (compared with a “theoretical” proof) of additionally providing accurate quantitative information.The authors have been working more than a quarter century to establish methods for the verified computation of solutions for partial differential equations, mainly for nonlinear elliptic problems of the form -∆u=f(x,u,∇u) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Here, by “verified computation” is meant a computer-assisted numerical approach for proving the existence of a solution in a close and explicit neighborhood of an approximate solution. The quantitative information provided by these techniques is also significant from the viewpoint of a posteriori error estimates for approximate solutions of the concerned partial differential equations in a mathematically rigorous sense.In this monograph, the authors give a detailed description of the verified computations and computer-assisted proofs for partial differential equations that they developed. In Part I, the methods mainly studied by the authors Nakao and Watanabe are presented. These methods are based on a finite dimensional projection and constructive a priori error estimates for finite element approximations of the Poisson equation. In Part II, the computer-assisted approaches via eigenvalue bounds developed by the author Plum are explained in detail. The main task of this method consists of establishing eigenvalue bounds for the linearization of the corresponding nonlinear problem at the computed approximate solution. Some brief remarks on other approaches are also given in Part III. Each method in Parts I and II is accompanied by appropriate numerical examples that confirm the actual usefulness of theauthors’ methods. Also in some examples practical computer algorithms are supplied so that readers can easily implement the verification programs by themselves.