Applied Mathematics Commons^™

Momentum Space Algorithm For Electronic Structure Of Double-Incommensurate Trilayer Graphene, Kenneth Silver Beard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Numerical algorithms for computing the electronic structure of incommensurate 2D-materials using ab initio models are critical for predicting material properties and guiding experiments. For bilayers, momentum space and continuum models have been introduced to approximate observables of ab initio tight-binding models using a momentum description, despite the lack of periodicity in the tight-binding model required for Bloch theory. A similar structure has been introduced for double-incommensurate trilayers using a continuum model, where the three lattices are mutually incommensurate. However, this description leads to a four-dimensional lattice space, and numerical convergence of the density of states has been observed to be …

Quasistatic Peridynamics, Existence Of Unique Solution In The Presence Of Damage, Nuwanthi N. Samarawickrama

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A mathematical model for damage propagation based on nonlocal potentials is developed within the framework of peridynamics. This model is applied to simulate damage evolution in cyclically loaded structures. By neglecting inertial effects, a well-posed quasistatic formulation for cyclic loading is obtained.\\ The resulting equation is expressed as a nonlocal and nonlinear integral operator that couples damage evolution to the deformation field.\\ This coupling occurs through the product of a damage factor and the derivative of a force potential. The damage factor ranges between zero and one, where one represents undamaged material and zero indicates complete damage.\\ It serves to …

Gain Threshold Optimization Using Fano Resonance, Alina Oktiabrskaia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study of resonances in electromagnetics plays a critical role in the design of optical systems. This dissertation investigates the interaction between resonance and gain in optical structures to establish a universal principle for achieving ultra-low-threshold lasing. Through the analysis of geometric symmetries, material properties, and coupling mechanisms, this research develops prototype structures applicable to a wide range of optical and electromagnetic systems. A range of models is considered, starting from a simple onedimensional string-resonator system (based on the model of H. Lamb), then advancing to two- and three-dimensional waveguide models, and culminating with a realistic high-contrast model in open …

Unfitted Finite Element Methods For Shape Optimization And Liquid Crystals, Jeremy T. Shahan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We present an approach to shape optimization problems that uses an unfitted finite element method (FEM). The domain geometry is represented, and optimized, using a (dis- crete) level set function and we consider objective functionals that are defined over bulk domains. For a discrete objective functional, defined in the unfitted FEM framework, we show that the exact discrete shape derivative essentially matches the shape derivative at the continuous level. In other words, our approach has the benefits of both optimize-then- discretize and discretize-then-optimize approaches.

Specifically, we establish the shape Fréchet differentiability of discrete (unfitted) bulk shape functionals using both the …

Learning Problems Related To Stochastic Differential Equations, Jinpu Zhou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) are essential for modeling systems influenced by both deterministic dynamics and random fluctuations, with applications in a wide variety of disciplines. This thesis develops a Bayesian framework for nonparametric learning in SDEs, addressing key challenges in inference, particularly when dealing with complex systems and incomplete data. The thesis begins by establishing a theoretical foundation in optimization over Hilbert spaces, including a generalized representer theorem to address infinite-dimensional optimization problems encountered in nonparametric inference. Building on this, we introduce a Bayesian framework with shrinkage priors to learn drift functions from high-frequency data. Bayesian approach incorporates low-cost sparse …

Asymptotic Formula For Scattering Problems Related To Thin Metasurfaces, Zachary Jermain

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this work is to develop an asymptotic formula for the behavior of a scattered electromagnetic field in the presence of a thin metamaterial known as a metasurface. By using a carefully chosen Green’s function and the single and double layer potentials we analyze the perturbed scattering problem in the presence of the metamaterial and a background scattering problem. By using Lippman-Schwinger type representation formulas for the two fields we develop the asymptotic formula for the perturbed field. From here we prove the asymptotic formula holds up to a specific error term based on the size of the …

Modeling And Numerical Analysis Of The Cholesteric Landau-De Gennes Model, Andrew L. Hicks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis gives an analysis of modeling and numerical issues in the Landau-de Gennes (LdG) model of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) with cholesteric effects. We derive various time-step restrictions for a (weighted) $L^2$ gradient flow scheme to be energy decreasing. Furthermore, we prove a mesh size restriction, for finite element discretizations, that is critical to avoid spurious numerical artifacts in discrete minimizers that is not well-known in the LC literature, particularly when simulating cholesteric LCs that exhibit ``twist''. Furthermore, we perform a computational exploration of the model and present several numerical simulations in 3-D, on both slab geometries and spherical …

Finite Element Methods For Elliptic Optimal Control Problems With General Tracking, Seonghee Jeong

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation concerns a linear-quadratic elliptic distributed optimal control problem with pointwise state constraints in two spatial dimensions, where the cost function tracks the state at points, curves and regions of a domain.

First we explore the elliptic optimal control problem subject to pointwise control constraints. This problem is reduced into a problem that only involves the control. The solution of the reduced problem is characterized by a variational inequality. Then we introduce the elliptic optimal control problem with general tracking and pointwise state constraints. Here we reformulate the optimal control problem into a problem that only involves the state, …

First-Order Algorithms For Nonlinear Structured Optimization, Miao Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nonlinear optimization is a critical branch in applied mathematics and has attracted wide attention due to its popularity in practical applications. In this work, we present two methods which use first-order information to solve two typical classes of nonlinear structured optimization problems.

For a class of unconstrained nonconvex composite optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth but possibly nonconvex function and a convex but possibly nonsmooth function, we propose a unified proximal gradient method with extrapolation, which provides unified treatment to convex and nonconvex problems. The method achieves the best-known convergence rate for first-order methods when …

Bloch Spectra For High Contrast Elastic Media, Jayasinghage Ruchira Nirmali Perera

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary goal of this dissertation is to develop analytic representation formulas and power series to describe the band structure inside periodic elastic crystals made from high contrast inclusions. We use source free modes associated with structural spectra to represent the solution operator of the Lame' system inside phononic crystals. Then we obtain convergent power series for the Bloch wave spectrum using the representation formulas. An explicit bound on the convergence radius is given through the structural spectra of the inclusion array and the Dirichlet spectra of the inclusions. Sufficient conditions for the separation of spectral branches of the dispersion …

Optimal Design Problems With State Constraints, Nha Van Tran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis focuses on constrained optimization problems with constraints on the state variables. When the constraints involve partial differential equations or variational inequalities, the optimization problem is also known as Mathematical Programs with Equilibrium Constraints. First, we applied active-set properties of optimal solutions to transform variational inequality constraints into partial differential equation constraints and devised an active-set method which allowed us to solve the optimization problems using the adjoint approach. We extended our approach to evolution problems with constraints on the trajectory of the state variable, such as the irreversibility condition in fracture mechanics. We implemented a gradient descent algorithm …

Characterizing The Northern Hemisphere Circumpolar Vortex Through Space And Time, Nazla Bushra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This hemispheric-scale, steering atmospheric circulation represented by the circumpolar vortices (CPVs) are the middle- and upper-tropospheric wind belts circumnavigating the poles. Variability in the CPV area, shape, and position are important topics in geoenvironmental sciences because of the many links to environmental features. However, a means of characterizing the CPV has remained elusive. The goal of this research is to (i) identify the Northern Hemisphere CPV (NHCPV) and its morphometric characteristics, (ii) understand the daily characteristics of NHCPV area and circularity over time, (iii) identify and analyze spatiotemporal variability in the NHCPV’s centroid, and (iv) analyze how CPV features relate …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of Variable Magnetic Field Gradients On Soot And Co Emissions From Non-Premixed Hydrocarbon Flames, Edison Ekperechukwu Chukwuemeka

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The interaction of the paramagnetic species in a combustion process with the mag- netic field placed in the vicinity of non-premixed flames affects the characteristics of the non-premixed flames - flame height and flame lift-off height. However, the effect of this magnetic interaction on the pollutants generated by the flame is unknown.

In general, pollutant formation is promoted in most combustion systems due to in- complete combustion of the hydrocarbon due to improper mixing. Since paramagnetic combustion species such as O2, O, OH, etc interacts with magnetic fields and possess a preferential motion direction, imposing magnetic field on non-premixed flames …

Stochastic Navier-Stokes Equations With Markov Switching, Po-Han Hsu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the study of three-dimensional (regularized) stochastic Navier-Stokes equations with Markov switching. A Markov chain is introduced into the noise term to capture the transitions from laminar to turbulent flow, and vice versa. The existence of the weak solution (in the sense of stochastic analysis) is shown by studying the martingale problem posed by it. This together with the pathwise uniqueness yields existence of the unique strong solution (in the sense of stochastic analysis). The existence and uniqueness of a stationary measure is established when the noise terms are additive and autonomous. Certain exit time estimates …

A Phase-Field Approach To Diffusion-Driven Fracture, Friedrich Wilhelm Alexander Dunkel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years applied mathematicians have used modern analysis to develop variational phase-field models of fracture based on Griffith's theory. These variational phase-field models of fracture have gained popularity due to their ability to predict the crack path and handle crack nucleation and branching.

In this work, we are interested in coupled problems where a diffusion process drives the crack propagation. We extend the variational phase-field model of fracture to account for diffusion-driving fracture and study the convergence of minimizers using gamma-convergence. We will introduce Newton's method for the constrained optimization problem and present an algorithm to solve the diffusion-driven …

Multigrid Methods For Elliptic Optimal Control Problems, Sijing Liu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation we study multigrid methods for linear-quadratic elliptic distributed optimal control problems.

For optimal control problems constrained by general second order elliptic partial differential equations, we design and analyze a $P_1$ finite element method based on a saddle point formulation. We construct a $W$-cycle algorithm for the discrete problem and show that it is uniformly convergent in the energy norm for convex domains. Moreover, the contraction number decays at the optimal rate of $m^{-1}$, where $m$ is the number of smoothing steps. We also prove that the convergence is robust with respect to a regularization parameter. The robust …

Finding Music In Chaos: Designing And Composing With Virtual Instruments Inspired By Chaotic Equations, Landon P. Viator

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Using chaos theory to design novel audio synthesis engines has been explored little in computer music. This could be because of the difficulty of obtaining harmonic tones or the likelihood of chaos-based synthesis engines to explode, which then requires re-instantiating of the engine to proceed with sound production. This process is not desirable when composing because of the time wasted fixing the synthesis engine instead of the composer being able to focus completely on the creative aspects of composition. One way to remedy these issues is to connect chaotic equations to individual parts of the synthesis engine instead of relying …

Dynamical Modeling In Cell Biology With Ordinary Differential Equations, Renee Marie Dale

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Dynamical systems have been of interest to biologists and mathematicians alike. Many processes in biology lend themselves to dynamical study. Movement, change, and response to stimuli are dynamical characteristics that define what is 'alive'. A scientific relationship between these two fields is therefore natural. In this thesis, I describe how my PhD research variously related to biological, mathematical, and computational problems in cell biology. In chapter 1 I introduce some of the current problems in the field. In chapter 2, my mathematical model of firefly luciferase in vivo shows the importance of dynamical models to understand systems. Data originally collected …

Design Of Metamaterials For Optics, Abiti Adili

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

First part of this dissertation studies the problem of designing metamaterial crystals with double negative effective properties for applications in optics by investigating the conditions necessary for generating novel dispersion properties in a metamaterial crystal with subwavelength microstructure. This provides novel optical properties created through local resonances tied to the geometry of the media in subwavelength regime.

In the second part, this dissertation studies the representation formula used to describe band structures in photonic crystals with plasmonic inclusions. By using layer potential techniques, a magnetic dipole operator describing the tangential component of the electrical field generated by magnetic distribution is …

Curve Tracking Control Under State Constraints And Uncertainties, Robert Kelly Sizemore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We study a class of steering control problems for free-moving particles tracking a curve in the plane and also in a three-dimensional environment, which are central problems in robotics. In the two-dimensional case, we provide adaptive controllers for curve tracking under unknown curvatures and control uncertainty. The system dynamics include a nonlinear dependence on the curvature, and are coupled with an estimator for the unknown curvature to form the augmented error dynamics. This nonlinear dependence puts our curvature identification objective outside the scope of existing adaptive tracking and parameter identification results that were limited to cases where the unknown parameters …

Non-Local Methods In Fracture Dynamics, Eyad Said

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We first introduce a regularized model for free fracture propagation based on non-local potentials. We work within the small deformation setting and the model is developed within a state based peridynamic formulation. At each instant of the evolution we identify the softening zone where strains lie above the strength of the material. We show that deformation discontinuities associated with flaws larger than the length scale of non-locality $\delta$ can become unstable and grow. An explicit inequality is found that shows that the volume of the softening zone goes to zero linearly with the length scale of non-local interaction. This scaling …

Backstepping And Sequential Predictors For Control Systems, Jerome Avery Weston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We provide new methods in mathematical control theory for two significant classes of control systems with time delays, based on backstepping and sequential prediction. Our bounded backstepping results ensure global asymptotic stability for partially linear systems with an arbitrarily large number of integrators. We also build sequential predictors for time-varying linear systems with time-varying delays in the control, sampling in the control, and time-varying measurement delays. Our bounded backstepping results are novel because of their use of converging-input-converging-state conditions, which make it possible to solve feedback stabilization problems under input delays and under boundedness conditions on the feedback control. Our …

Spectra Of Quantum Trees And Orthogonal Polynomials, Zhaoxia Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We investigate the spectrum of regular quantum-graph trees, where the edges are endowed with a Schr\"odinger operator with self-adjoint Robin vertex conditions. It is known that, for large eigenvalues, the Robin spectrum approaches the Neumann spectrum. In this research, we compute the lower Robin spectrum. The spectrum can be obtained from the roots of a sequence of orthogonal polynomials involving two variables. As the length of the quantum tree increases, the spectrum approaches a band-gap structure. We find that the lowest band tends to minus infinity as the Robin parameter increases, whereas the rest of the bands remain positive. Unexpectedly, …

General Stochastic Integral And Itô Formula With Application To Stochastic Differential Equations And Mathematical Finance, Jiayu Zhai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A general stochastic integration theory for adapted and instantly independent stochastic processes arises when we consider anticipative stochastic differential equations. In Part I of this thesis, we conduct a deeper research on the general stochastic integral introduced by W. Ayed and H.-H. Kuo in 2008. We provide a rigorous mathematical framework for the integral in Chapter 2, and prove that the integral is well-defined. Then a general Itô formula is given. In Chapter 3, we present an intrinsic property, near-martingale property, of the general stochastic integral, and Doob-Meyer's decomposition for near-submartigales. We apply the new stochastic integration theory to several …

Electromagnetic Resonant Scattering In Layered Media With Fabrication Errors, Emily Anne Mchenry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In certain layered electromagnetic media, one can construct a waveguide that supports a harmonic electromagnetic field at a frequency that is embedded in the continuous spectrum. When the structure is perturbed, this embedded eigenvalue moves into the complex plane and becomes a “complex resonance” frequency. The real and imaginary parts of this complex frequency have physical meaning. They lie behind anomalous scattering behaviors known collectively as “Fano resonance”, and people are interested in tuning them to specific values in optical devices. The mathematics involves spectral theory and analytic perturbation theory and is well understood [16], at least on a theoretical …

Information Theoretic Study Of Gaussian Graphical Models And Their Applications, Ali Moharrer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In many problems we are dealing with characterizing a behavior of a complex stochastic system or its response to a set of particular inputs. Such problems span over several topics such as machine learning, complex networks, e.g., social or communication networks; biology, etc. Probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) are powerful tools that offer a compact modeling of complex systems. They are designed to capture the random behavior, i.e., the joint distribution of the system to the best possible accuracy. Our goal is to study certain algebraic and topological properties of a special class of graphical models, known as Gaussian graphs. First, …

Extraction Of Displacement Fields In Heterogeneous Media Using Optimal Local Basis Functions, Paul Derek Sinz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Multiscale Spectral Generalized Finite Element Method (MS-GFEM) was developed in recent work by Babuska and Lipton. The method uses optimal local shape functions, optimal in the sense of the Kolmogorov n-width, to approximate solutions to a second order linear elliptic partial differential equation with L-infinity coefficients. In this dissertation an implementation of MS-GFEM over a two subdomain partition of unity is outlined and several numerical experiments are presented. The method is applied to compute local fields inside high contrast particle suspensions. The method's performance is evaluated for various examples with different contrasts between reinforcement particles and matrix material. The …

Asymptotic Formulae For Restricted Unimodal Sequences, Richard Alexander Frnka

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Additive enumeration problems, such as counting the number of integer partitions, lie at the intersection of various branches of mathematics including combinatorics, number theory, and analysis. Extending partitions to integer unimodal sequences has also yielded interesting combinatorial results and asymptotic formulae, which form the subject of this thesis. Much like the important work of Hardy and Ramanujan proving the asymptotic formula for the partition function, Auluck and Wright gave similar formulas for unimodal sequences. Following the circle method of Wright, we provide the asymptotic expansion for unimodal sequences with odd parts. This is then generalized to a two-parameter family of …

On Braids, Branched Covers And Transverse Invariants, Jose Hector Ceniceros

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this work, we present a brief survey of knot theory supported by contact 3-manifolds. We focus on transverse knots and explore different ways of studying transverse knots. We define a new family of transverse invariants, this is accomplished by considering $n$-fold cyclic branched covers branched along a transverse knot and we then extend the definition of the BRAID invariant $t$ defined in cite{BVV} to the lift of the transverse knot. We call the new invariant the lift of the BRAID invariant and denote it by $t_n$. We then go on to show that $t_n$ satisfies a comultiplication formula and …

Moduli Spaces Of Flat Gsp-Bundles, Neal David Livesay

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A classical problem in the theory of differential equations is the classification of first-order singular differential operators up to gauge equivalence. A related algebro-geometric problem involves the construction of moduli spaces of meromorphic connections. In 2001, P. Boalch constructed well-behaved moduli spaces in the case that each of the singularities are diagonalizable. In a recent series of papers, C. Bremer and D. Sage developed a new approach to the study of the local behavior of meromorphic connections using a geometric variant of fundamental strata, a tool originally introduced by C. Bushnell for the study of p-adic representation theory. Not only …