Analysis of Self-Organization

Abstract

The dissertation is devoted to the study of problems in calculus of variation, free boundary problems and gradient flows with respect to the Wasserstein metric.

More concretely, we consider the problem of characterizing the regularity of minimizers to a certain interaction energy. Minimizers of the interaction energy have a somewhat surprising relationship with solutions to obstacle problems. Here we prove and exploit this relationship to obtain novel regularity results.

Another problem we tackle is describing the asymptotic behavior of the Cahn-Hilliard equation with degenerate mobility. By framing the Cahn-Hilliard equation with degenerate mobility as a gradient flow in Wasserstein metric, in one space dimension, we prove its convergence to a degenerate parabolic equation under the framework recently developed by Sandier-Serfaty.