This is a thesis on general relativity. It analyzes dynamical properties of Einstein's field equations in cosmology and in the vicinity of spacetime singularities in a number of different situations. Different techniques are used depending on the particular problem under study; dynamical systems methods are applied to cosmological models with spatial homogeneity; Hamiltonian methods are used in connection with dynamical systems to find global monotone quantities determining the asymptotic states; Fuchsian methods are used to quantify the structure of singularities in spacetimes without symmetries. All these separate methods of analysis provide insights about different facets of the structure of the equations, while at the same time they show the relationships between those facets when the different methods are used to analyze overlapping areas. The thesis consists of two parts. Part I reviews the areas of mathematics and cosmology necessary to understand the material in part II, which consists of five papers. The first two of those papers uses dynamical systems methods to analyze the simplest possible homogeneous model with two tilted perfect fluids with a linear equation of state. The third paper investigates the past asymptotic dynamics of barotropic multi-fluid models that approach a `silent and local' space-like singularity to the past. The fourth paper uses Hamiltonian methods to derive new monotone functions for the tilted Bianchi type II model that can be used to completely characterize the future asymptotic states globally. The last paper proves that there exists a full set of solutions to Einstein's field equations coupled to an ultra-stiff perfect fluid that has an initial singularity that is very much like the singularity in Friedman models in a precisely defined way. / <p>Status of the paper "Perfect Fluids and Generic Spacelike Singularities" has changed from manuscript to published since the thesis defense.</p>

published_or_final_version / abstract / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

We provide a unifying projection-based framework for structure-preserving interpolatory model reduction of parameterized linear dynamical systems, i.e., systems having a structured dependence on parameters that we wish to retain in the reduced-order model. The parameter dependence may be linear or nonlinear and is retained in the reduced-order model. Moreover, we are able to give conditions under which the gradient and Hessian of the system response with respect to the system parameters is matched in the reduced-order model. We provide a systematic approach built on established interpolatory $\mathcal{H}_2$ optimal model reduction methods that will produce parameterized reduced-order models having high fidelity throughout a parameter range of interest. For single input/single output systems with parameters in the input/output maps, we provide reduced-order models that are \emph{optimal} with respect to an $\mathcal{H}_2\otimes\mathcal{L}_2$ joint error measure. The capabilities of these approaches are illustrated by several numerical examples from technical applications.

- / -

Computational efficiency of solving the dynamics of highly oscillatory systems is an important issue due to the requirement of small step size of explicit numerical integration algorithms. A system is considered to be highly oscillatory if it contains a fast solution that varies regularly about a slow solution. As for multibody systems, stiff force elements and contacts between bodies can make a system highly oscillatory. Standard explicit numerical integration methods should take a very small step size to satisfy the absolute stability condition for all eigenvalues of the system and the computational cost is dictated by the fast solution. In this research, a new hybrid integration scheme is proposed, in which the local linearization method is combined with a conventional integration method such as the fourth-order Runge-Kutta. In this approach, the system is partitioned into fast and slow subsystems. Then, the two subsystems are transformed into a reduced and a boundary-layer system using the singular perturbation theory. The reduced system is solved by the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method while the boundary-layer system is solved by the local linearization method. This new hybrid scheme can handle the coupling between the fast and the slow subsystems efficiently. Unlike other multi-rate or multi-method schemes, extrapolation or interpolation process is not required to deal with the coupling between subsystems. Most of the coupling effect can be accounted for by the reduced (or quasi-steady-state) system while the minor transient effect is taken into consideration by averaging. In this research, the absolute stability region for this hybrid scheme is derived and it is shown that the absolute stability region is almost independent of the fast variables. Thus, the selection of the step size is not dictated by the fast solution when a highly oscillatory system is solved, in turn, the computational efficiency can be improved. The advantage of the proposed hybrid scheme is validated through several dynamic simulations of a vehicle system including a flexible tire model. The results reveal that the hybrid scheme can reduce the computation time of the vehicle dynamic simulation significantly while attaining comparable accuracy.

The main goal of this dissertation was to study the bifurcation structure underlying families of low dimensional dynamical systems that model cellular excitability. One of the main contributions of this work is a mathematical characterization of profiles of electrophysiological activity in excitable cells of the same identified type, and across cell types, as a function of the relative levels of expression of ion channels coded by specific genes. In doing so, a generic formulation for transmembrane transport was derived from first principles in two different ways, expanding previous work by other researchers. The relationship between the expression of specific membrane proteins mediating transmembrane transport and the electrophysiological profile of excitable cells is well reproduced by electrodiffusion models of membrane potential involving as few as 2 state variables and as little as 2 transmembrane currents. Different forms of the generic electrodiffusion model presented here can be used to study the geometry underlying different forms of excitability in cardiocytes, neurons, and other excitable cells, and to simulate different patterns of response to constant, time-dependent, and (stochastic) time- and voltage-dependent stimuli. In all cases, an initial analysis performed on a deterministic, autonoumous version of the system of interest is presented to develop basic intuition that can be used to guide analyses of non-autonomous or stochastic versions of the model. Modifications of the biophysical models presented here can be used to study complex physiological systems involving single cells with specific membrane proteins, possibly linking different levels of biological organization and spatio-temporal scales.

Dans ce travail de thèse, nous développons une notion de mesure de Gibbs pour le flot géodésique tangent aux feuilles d'un fibré feuilleté au dessus d'une base négativement courbée. Nous développons également une notion de mesure F-harmonique et prouvons qu'il existe une correspondance bijective entre les deux. Lorsque la fibre est une droite projective complexe, que l'holonomie est projective, et qu'il n'y a pas de mesure transverse invariante, nous prouvons l'unicité de ces mesures, et ce pour tout potentiel Hölder sur la base. Dans ce cas, nous prouvons également que la mesure F-harmonique se réalise comme limite pondérée de grandes boules tangentes aux feuilles, et que leurs mesures conditionnelles dans les fibres sont des limites de moyennes pondérées sur les orbites du groupe d'holonomie.

This thesis describes the comparison of time-lapse field observations of suncups on alpine snow with numerical simulations. The simulations consist of solutions to a nonlinear partial differential equation which exhibits spontaneous pattern formation from a low amplitude, random initial surface. Both the field observations and the numerical solutions are found to saturate at a characteristic height and fluctuate chaotically with time. The timescale of these fluctuations is found to be instrumental in determining the full set of parameters for the numerical model such that it mimics the nonlinear dynamics of suncups. These parameters in turn are related to the change in albedo of the snow surface caused by the presence of suncups. This suggests the more general importance of dynamical behaviour in gaining an understanding of pattern formation phenomena.

Many mathematical models generally consist of either a continuous system like that of a system of differential equations, or a discrete system such as a discrete game theoretic model; however, there exist phenomena in which neither modeling approach alone is sufficient for capturing the behaviour of the intended real world system. This leads to the need to explore the use of combinations of such discrete and continuous processes, namely the use of mathematical modeling with what are known as hybrid dynamical systems. In what follows, we provide a blueprint for one approach to study several classes of equilibrium problems in non-equilibrium states through the direct use of hybrid dynamical systems. The motivation of our work stems from the fact that the real world is rarely, if ever, in a state of perfect equilibrium and that the behaviour of equilibrium problems in non-equilibrium states is just as complex and interesting (if not more so) than standard equilibrium solutions. Our approach consists of an association of classes of traffic equilibrium problems, noncooperative games, minimization problems, and complementarity problems to a class of hybrid dynamical system called projected dynamical systems. The purposed connection between equilibrium problems and projected dynamical system is made possible through mutual connections to the robust framework of variational inequalities. The results of our work include theoretical contributions such as showing how evolution solutions (non-equilibrium solutions) can be analyzed from a theoretical point of view and how they relate to equilibrium solutions; computational methods for tracking and visualizing evolution solutions and the development of numerical algorithms for simulation; and applications such as the effect of population vaccination decisions in the spread of infectious disease, dynamic traffic networks, dynamic vaccination games, and nonsmooth electrical circuits.

According to the needs, real systems can be modeled at various level of resolution. It can be detailed interactions at the individual level (or at microscopic level) or a sample of the system (or at mesoscopic level) and also by averaging over mesoscopic (structural) states; that is, at the level of interactions between subsystems of the original system (or at macroscopic level). With the microscopic study one can get a detailed information of the interaction but at a cost of heavy computational work. Also sometimes such a detailed information is redundant. On the other hand, macroscopic analysis, computationally less involved and easy to verify by experiments. But the results obtained may be too crude for some applications. Thus, the mesoscopic level of analysis has been quite popular in recent years for studying real systems. Here we will focus on structured population models where we can observe various level of organization such as individual, a group of population, or a community. Due to fast movement of the individual compare of the other demographic processes (like death and birth), the problem is multiple-scale. There are various methods to handle multiple-scale problem. In this work we will follow asymptotic analysis ( or more precisely compressed Chapman–Enskog method) to approximate the microscopic model by the averaged one at a given level of accuracy. We also generalize our model by introducing reducible migration structure. Along with this, considering age dependency of the migration rates and the mortality rates, the thesis o ers improvement of the existing literature. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.