This volume contains both survey and creative papers dealing with Morse theory, minimax theory, iteration theory of Maslov-type index and critical minimization problems. The book particularly emphasizes applications to nonlinear differential equations.
The book is based on my lecture notes "Infinite dimensional Morse theory and its applications", 1985, Montreal, and one semester of graduate lectures delivered at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1987. Since the aim of this monograph is to give a unified account of the topics in critical point theory, a considerable amount of new materials has been added. Some of them have never been published previously. The book is of interest both to researchers following the development of new results, and to people seeking an introduction into this theory. The main results are designed to be as self-contained as possible. And for the reader's convenience, some preliminary background information has been organized. The following people deserve special thanks for their direct roles in help ing to prepare this book. Prof. L. Nirenberg, who first introduced me to this field ten years ago, when I visited the Courant Institute of Math Sciences. Prof. A. Granas, who invited me to give a series of lectures at SMS, 1983, Montreal, and then the above notes, as the primary version of a part of the manuscript, which were published in the SMS collection. Prof. P. Rabinowitz, who provided much needed encouragement during the academic semester, and invited me to teach a semester graduate course after which the lecture notes became the second version of parts of this book. Professors A. Bahri and H. Brezis who suggested the publication of the book in the Birkhiiuser series.
The book provides an introduction to minimax methods in critical point theory and shows their use in existence questions for nonlinear differential equations. An expanded version of the author's 1984 CBMS lectures, this volume is the first monograph devoted solely to these topics. Among the abstract questions considered are the following: the mountain pass and saddle point theorems, multiple critical points for functionals invariant under a group of symmetries, perturbations from symmetry, and variational methods in bifurcation theory. The book requires some background in functional analysis and differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations. It is addressed to mathematicians interested in differential equations and/or nonlinear functional analysis, particularly critical point theory.
The book is based on my lecture notes "Infinite dimensional Morse theory and its applications", 1985, Montreal, and one semester of graduate lectures delivered at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1987. Since the aim of this monograph is to give a unified account of the topics in critical point theory, a considerable amount of new materials has been added. Some of them have never been published previously. The book is of interest both to researchers following the development of new results, and to people seeking an introduction into this theory. The main results are designed to be as self-contained as possible. And for the reader's convenience, some preliminary background information has been organized. The following people deserve special thanks for their direct roles in help ing to prepare this book. Prof. L. Nirenberg, who first introduced me to this field ten years ago, when I visited the Courant Institute of Math Sciences. Prof. A. Granas, who invited me to give a series of lectures at SMS, 1983, Montreal, and then the above notes, as the primary version of a part of the manuscript, which were published in the SMS collection. Prof. P. Rabinowitz, who provided much needed encouragement during the academic semester, and invited me to teach a semester graduate course after which the lecture notes became the second version of parts of this book. Professors A. Bahri and H. Brezis who suggested the publication of the book in the Birkhiiuser series.
The papers collected in this volume are contributions to the 43rd session of the Seminaire ́ de mathematiques ́ superieures ́ (SMS) on “Morse Theoretic Methods in Nonlinear Analysis and Symplectic Topology.” This session took place at the Universite ́ de Montreal ́ in July 2004 and was a NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI). The aim of the ASI was to bring together young researchers from various parts of the world and to present to them some of the most signi cant recent advances in these areas. More than 77 mathematicians from 17 countries followed the 12 series of lectures and participated in the lively exchange of ideas. The lectures covered an ample spectrum of subjects which are re ected in the present volume: Morse theory and related techniques in in nite dim- sional spaces, Floer theory and its recent extensions and generalizations, Morse and Floer theory in relation to string topology, generating functions, structure of the group of Hamiltonian di?eomorphisms and related dynamical problems, applications to robotics and many others. We thank all our main speakers for their stimulating lectures and all p- ticipants for creating a friendly atmosphere during the meeting. We also thank Ms. Diane Belanger ́ , our administrative assistant, for her help with the organi- tion and Mr. Andre ́ Montpetit, our technical editor, for his help in the preparation of the volume.
The book is intended to be an introduction to critical point theory and its applications to differential equations. Although the related material can be found in other books, the authors of this volume have had the following goals in mind: To present a survey of existing minimax theorems, To give applications to elliptic differential equations in bounded domains, To consider the dual variational method for problems with continuous and discontinuous nonlinearities, To present some elements of critical point theory for locally Lipschitz functionals and give applications to fourth-order differential equations with discontinuous nonlinearities, To study homoclinic solutions of differential equations via the variational methods. The contents of the book consist of seven chapters, each one divided into several sections. Audience: Graduate and post-graduate students as well as specialists in the fields of differential equations, variational methods and optimization.
Many boundary value problems are equivalent to Au=O (1) where A : X --+ Y is a mapping between two Banach spaces. When the problem is variational, there exists a differentiable functional rand inf.
This book is an introduction to modern methods of symplectic topology. It is devoted to explaining the solution of an important problem originating from classical mechanics: the 'Arnold conjecture', which asserts that the number of 1-periodic trajectories of a non-degenerate Hamiltonian system is bounded below by the dimension of the homology of the underlying manifold. The first part is a thorough introduction to Morse theory, a fundamental tool of differential topology. It defines the Morse complex and the Morse homology, and develops some of their applications. Morse homology also serves a simple model for Floer homology, which is covered in the second part. Floer homology is an infinite-dimensional analogue of Morse homology. Its involvement has been crucial in the recent achievements in symplectic geometry and in particular in the proof of the Arnold conjecture. The building blocks of Floer homology are more intricate and imply the use of more sophisticated analytical methods, all of which are explained in this second part. The three appendices present a few prerequisites in differential geometry, algebraic topology and analysis. The book originated in a graduate course given at Strasbourg University, and contains a large range of figures and exercises. Morse Theory and Floer Homology will be particularly helpful for graduate and postgraduate students.
Presents a Morse theoretic study of a very general class of homogeneous operators that includes the $p$-Laplacian as a special case. The $p$-Laplacian operator is a quasilinear differential operator that arises in many applications such as non-Newtonian fluid flows. Working with a new sequence of eigenvalues that uses the cohomological index, the authors systematically develop alternative tools such as nonlinear linking and local splitting theories in order to effectively apply Morse theory to quasilinear problems.
The techniques that can be used to solve non-linear problems are far different than those that are used to solve linear problems. Many courses in analysis and applied mathematics attack linear cases simply because they are easier to solve and do not require a large theoretical background in order to approach them. Professor Schechter's 2005 book is devoted to non-linear methods using the least background material possible and the simplest linear techniques. An understanding of the tools for solving non-linear problems is developed whilst demonstrating their application to problems in one dimension and then leading to higher dimensions. The reader is guided using simple exposition and proof, assuming a minimal set of pre-requisites. For completion, a set of appendices covering essential basics in functional analysis and metric spaces is included, making this ideal as an accompanying text on an upper-undergraduate or graduate course, or even for self-study.