This paper deals with the fractional Sobolev spaces W s;p . We analyze the relations among some of their possible denitions and their role in the trace theory. We prove continuous and compact embeddings, investigating the problem of the extension domains and other regularity results. Most of the results we present here are probably well known to the experts, but we believe that our proofs are original and we do not make use of any interpolation techniques nor pass through the theory of Besov spaces. We also present some counterexamples in non-Lipschitz domains.

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Hitchhiker's guide to the fractional Sobolev spaces

The author's preface gives an outline: "This book is about weakconvergence methods in metric spaces, with applications sufficient to show their power and utility. The Introduction motivates the definitions and indicates how the theory will yield solutions to problems arising outside it. Chapter 1 sets out the basic general theorems, which are then specialized in Chapter 2 to the space C[0, l ] of continuous functions on the unit interval and in Chapter 3 to the space D [0, 1 ] of functions with discontinuities of the first kind. The results of the first three chapters are used in Chapter 4 to derive a variety of limit theorems for dependent sequences of random variables. " The book develops and expands on Donsker's 1951 and 1952 papers on the invariance principle and empirical distributions. The basic random variables remain real-valued although, of course, measures on C[0, l ] and D[0, l ] are vitally used. Within this framework, there are various possibilities for a different and apparently better treatment of the material. More of the general theory of weak convergence of probabilities on separable metric spaces would be useful. Metrizability of the convergence is not brought up until late in the Appendix. The close relation of the Prokhorov metric and a metric for convergence in probability is (hence) not mentioned (see V. Strassen, Ann. Math. Statist. 36 (1965), 423-439; the reviewer, ibid. 39 (1968), 1563-1572). This relation would illuminate and organize such results as Theorems 4.1, 4.2 and 4.4 which give isolated, ad hoc connections between weak convergence of measures and nearness in probability. In the middle of p. 16, it should be noted that C*(S) consists of signed measures which need only be finitely additive if 5 is not compact. On p. 239, where the author twice speaks of separable subsets having nonmeasurable cardinal, he means "discrete" rather than "separable." Theorem 1.4 is Ulam's theorem that a Borel probability on a complete separable metric space is tight. Theorem 1 of Appendix 3 weakens completeness to topological completeness. After mentioning that probabilities on the rationals are tight, the author says it is an

Convergence of probability measures

to be done in this area. Face recognition is a problem that scarcely clamoured for attention before the computer age but, having surfaced, has involved a wide range of techniques and has attracted the attention of some fine minds (David Mumford was a Fields Medallist in 1974). This singular application of mathematical modelling to a messy applied problem of obvious utility and importance but with no unique solution is a pretty one to share with students: perhaps, returning to the source of our opening quotation, we may invert Duncan's earlier observation, 'There is an art to find the mind's construction in the face!'.

Linear and nonlinear waves, by G. B. Whitham. Pp.636. £50. 1999. ISBN 0 471 35942 4 (Wiley).

关于Semigroups of Linear Operators and Applications to Partial Differential Equations的两个注解

The electronic ground state of a periodic system is usually described in terms of extended Bloch orbitals, but an alternative representation in terms of localized "Wannier functions" was introduced by Gregory Wannier in 1937. The connection between the Bloch and Wannier representations is realized by families of transformations in a continuous space of unitary matrices, carrying a large degree of arbitrariness. Since 1997, methods have been developed that allow one to iteratively transform the extended Bloch orbitals of a first-principles calculation into a unique set of maximally localized Wannier functions, accomplishing the solid-state equivalent of constructing localized molecular orbitals, or "Boys orbitals" as previously known from the chemistry literature. These developments are reviewed here, and a survey of the applications of these methods is presented. This latter includes a description of their use in analyzing the nature of chemical bonding, or as a local probe of phenomena related to electric polarization and orbital magnetization. Wannier interpolation schemes are also reviewed, by which quantities computed on a coarse reciprocal-space mesh can be used to interpolate onto much finer meshes at low cost, and applications in which Wannier functions are used as efficient basis functions are discussed. Finally the construction and use of Wannier functions outside the context of electronic-structure theory is presented, for cases that include phonon excitations, photonic crystals, and cold-atom optical lattices.

Maximally-localized Wannier Functions: Theory and Applications

We obtain an improved Sobolev inequality in \(\dot{H}^s\) spaces involving Morrey norms. This refinement yields a direct proof of the existence of optimizers and the compactness up to symmetry of optimizing sequences for the usual Sobolev embedding. More generally, it allows to derive an alternative, more transparent proof of the profile decomposition in \(\dot{H}^s\) obtained in Gerard (ESAIM Control Optim Calc Var 3:213–233, 1998) using the abstract approach of dislocation spaces developed in Tintarev and Fieseler (Concentration compactness. Functional-analytic grounds and applications. Imperial College Press, London, 2007). We also analyze directly the local defect of compactness of the Sobolev embedding in terms of measures in the spirit of Lions (Rev Mat Iberoamericana 1:145–201, 1985, Rev Mat Iberoamericana 1:45–121, 1985). As a model application, we study the asymptotic limit of a family of subcritical problems, obtaining concentration results for the corresponding optimizers which are well known when \(s\) is an integer (Rey in Manuscr Math 65:19–37, 1989, Han in Ann Inst Henri Poincare Anal Non Lineaire 8:159–174, 1991, Chou and Geng in Differ Integral Equ 13:921–940, 2000).

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Improved Sobolev embeddings, profile decomposition, and concentration-compactness for fractional Sobolev spaces

We consider a periodic Schroedinger operator and the composite Wannier functions corresponding to a relevant family of its Bloch bands, separated by a gap from the rest of the spectrum. We study the associated localization functional introduced by Marzari and Vanderbilt, and we prove some results about the existence and exponential localization of its minimizers, in dimension d < 4. The proof exploits ideas and methods from the theory of harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds.

Bloch bundles, Marzari-Vanderbilt functional and maximally localized Wannier functions

We extend the global compactness result by Struwe (1984) to any fractional Sobolev spaces  H s ( Ω ) , for  0 s N / 2 and Ω ⊂ R N a bounded domain with smooth boundary. The proof is a simple direct consequence of the so-called profile decomposition of Gerard (1998).

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A Global Compactness type result for Palais–Smale sequences in fractional Sobolev spaces

We consider a periodic Schrodinger operator and the composite Wannier functions corresponding to a relevant family of its Bloch bands, separated by a gap from the rest of the spectrum. We study the associated localization functional introduced in Marzari and Vanderbilt (Phys Rev B 56:12847–12865, 1997) and we prove some results about the existence and exponential localization of its minimizers, in dimension \({d \leq 3}\). The proof exploits ideas and methods from the theory of harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds.

Bloch Bundles, Marzari-Vanderbilt Functional and Maximally Localized Wannier Functions

We study global minimizers of the Landau–de Gennes (LdG) energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, on arbitrary three-dimensional simply connected geometries with topologically non-trivial and physically relevant Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our results are specific to an asymptotic limit coined in terms of a dimensionless temperature and material-dependent parameter, t and some constraints on the material parameters, and we work in the t→∞ limit that captures features of the widely used Lyuksyutov constraint (Kralj and Virga in J Phys A 34:829–838, 2001). We prove (i) that (re-scaled) global LdG minimizers converge uniformly to a (minimizing) limiting harmonic map, away from the singular set of the limiting map; (ii) we have points of maximal biaxiality and uniaxiality near each singular point of the limiting map; (iii) estimates for the size of “strongly biaxial” regions in terms of the parameter t. We further show that global LdG minimizers in the restricted class of uniaxial Q-tensors cannot be stable critical points of the LdG energy in this limit.

/pdf/uniaxial-versus-biaxial-character-of-nematic-equilibria-in-1elx72i36o.pdf

Adriano Pisante

Papers

Improved Sobolev embeddings, profile decomposition, and concentration-compactness for fractional Sobolev spaces

Bloch bundles, Marzari-Vanderbilt functional and maximally localized Wannier functions

A Global Compactness type result for Palais–Smale sequences in fractional Sobolev spaces

Bloch Bundles, Marzari-Vanderbilt Functional and Maximally Localized Wannier Functions

Uniaxial versus biaxial character of nematic equilibria in three dimensions