Organisers: H Brezis (Paris), EN Dancer (Sydney) JF Toland (Bath),NS Trudinger (Aust Nat Univ)

Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, UK

Workshop

VARIATIONAL PROBLEMS WITH SINGULARITIES

25 June - 29 June 2001

Organisers: Professor F Bethuel and Professor H Brezis

Themes: Problems occurring in physics (liquid crystals, superfluids, superconductors), as well as in emerging fields such as image processing, lead to solutions of variational problems with singularities - points, lines or surfaces. The aim is to bring together people with various backgrounds: physicists, material scientists, and mathematicians from the fields of nonlinear PDEs, geometry, geometric measure theory, calculus of variations and applied mathematics.

Specific topics to be addressed include:

1. Mathematical problems occurring in the physics of superconductors or superfluids
2. Mathematical problems in liquid crystals
3. Variational problems occurring in image segmentation and discontinuous structures
4. Connections with geometric measure theory, harmonic maps and Cartesian currents
5. Sobolev spaces with values into manifolds
6. Vortices and renormalized energies
7. Stability and symmetry in the Ginzburg-Landau system
8. Topology of vortices and connections with fluid mechanics and chemistry

Participants (provisional): A Aftalion, S Alama, G Alberti, L Almeida, L Ambrosio, F Bethuel, H Brezis, L Bronsard, A Chang, KC Chang, M Comte, M Giaquinta, S Gustafson, G Friesecke, R Jerrard, R Hardt, M Keissling, YY Li, K Mallick, P Mironescu, L Nirenberg, J Ockendon, G Orlandi, Y Pomeau, T Rivière, E Sandier, JC Saut, S Serfaty, I Shafrir, MI Sigal, M Soner, P Sternberg, P Yang.

Location and cost: The Workshop will take place at the Newton Institute and accommodation for participants will be provided in single study bedrooms with shared bathrooms at Wolfson Court, a hall of residence adjacent to the Institute. The workshop package costs £300, which includes registration fee, accommodation, breakfast and dinner from dinner on Sunday 24 June until breakfast on Saturday 30 June, and lunches and refreshments on the days that lectures take place.

Completed application forms should be sent to Maureen Clark at the Newton Institute.

The closing date for the receipt of applications is 28 February 2001.

Scientific enquiries may be addressed to Professor Bethuel or Professor Brezis.

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