A phase transition approach to detecting singularities of partial differential equations (Q1043374)

The authors envisage a mesh refinement algorithm for detecting singularities of time-dependent partial differential equations. The algorithm is inspired by renormalization constructions used in statistical mechanics to evaluate the properties of a system near a critical point, that is, a phase transition. The main idea behind the algorithm is to treat the occurrence of singularities of time-dependent partial differential equations as phase transitions. The algorithm assumes the knowledge of an accurate reduced model. One provides a way of computing the necessary coefficients on the fly as needed. It is shown how the mesh refinement algorithm can be used to calculate the blow-up rate as one approaches the singularity. This calculation can be done in three different ways: (i) the direct approach where one monitors the blowing-up quantity as it approaches the singularity and uses the data to calculate the blow-up rate; (ii) the ``phase transition'' approach (a la Wilson) where one treats the singularity as a fixed point of the renormalization flow equation and proceeds to compute the blow-up rate via an analysis in the vicinity of the fixed point, and (iii) the ``scaling'' approach (a la Widom-Kadanoff) where one postulates the existence of scaling laws for different quantities close to the singularity, computes the associated exponents and then uses them to estimate the blow-up rate. The proposed algorithm allows a unified presentation of these three approaches. The inviscid Burgers and the supercritical focusing Schrödinger equations are used as instructive examples to illustrate the constructions.