University of Toronto PDE/Applied Math/Analysis Seminar Friday April 7, 3:10-4pm 6183 Bahen Center SPEAKER: Maria Pia Gualdani (Mainz) TITLE: A nonlinear fourth-order parabolic equation and related entropy functionals. ABSTRACT: A nonlinear fourth-order parabolic equation is presented; the equation appears in quantum semiconductor modeling and also in the study of interface fluctuation in a certain spin system. Several Lyapunov functionals are used in order to show existence results and long-time asymptotics for bounded and unbounded domains in one and more dimensional space. Exponential decay in time of the solution to the steady state is proved by the entropy-entropy production method using optimal logarithmic Sobolev inequalities. ------------------------------------------------------------------ University of Toronto PDE/Applied Math/Analysis Seminar http://www.math.toronto.edu/appmath/ 2005-2006 organizers: Pieter Blue pblue@ math.toronto.edu Almut Burchard almut@ math.toronto.edu Bob Jerrard rjerrard@ math.toronto.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------