Benoît Perthame

This book presents the state of the art in mathematical research on modelling the mechanics of biological systems – a science at the intersection between biology, mechanics and mathematics known as mechanobiology. The book gathers comprehensive surveys of the most significant areas of mechanobiology: cell motility and locomotion by shape control (Antonio DeSimone); models of cell motion and tissue growth (Benoît Perthame); numerical simulation of cardiac electromechanics (Alfio Quarteroni); and power-stroke-driven muscle contraction (Lev Truskinovsky). Each section is self-contained in terms of the biomechanical background, and the content is accessible to all readers with a basic understanding of differential equations and numerical analysis. The book disentangles the phenomenological complexity of the biomechanical problems, while at the same time addressing the mathematical complexity with invaluable clarity. The book is intended for a wide audience, in particulargraduate students and applied mathematicians interested in entering this fascinating field.

This book presents several fundamental questions in mathematical biology such as Turing instability, pattern formation, reaction-diffusion systems, invasion waves and Fokker-Planck equations. These are classical modeling tools for mathematical biology with applications to ecology and population dynamics, the neurosciences, enzymatic reactions, chemotaxis, invasion waves etc. The book presents these aspects from a mathematical perspective, with the aim of identifying those qualitative properties of the models that are relevant for biological applications. To do so, it uncovers the mechanisms at work behind Turing instability, pattern formation and invasion waves. This involves several mathematical tools, such as stability and instability analysis, blow-up in finite time, asymptotic methods and relative entropy properties. Given the content presented, the book is well suited as a textbook for master-level coursework.

This book presents models written as partial differential equations and originating from various questions in population biology, such as physiologically structured equations, adaptive dynamics, and bacterial movement. Its purpose is to derive appropriate mathematical tools and qualitative properties of the solutions. The book further contains many original PDE problems originating in biosciences.

This book gives a general presentation of the mathematical and numerical connections kinetic theory and conservation laws based on several earlier works with P. L. Lions and E. Tadmor, as well as on more recent developments. The kinetic formalism approach allows the reader to consider Partial Differential Equations, such as some nonlinear conservation laws, as linear kinetic (or semi-kinetic) equations acting on a nonlinear quantity. It also aids the reader with using Fourier transform, regularisation, and moments methods to provide new approaches for proving uniqueness, regularizing effects, and a priori bounds. Special care has been given to introduce basic tools, including the classical Boltzmann formalism to derive compressible fluid dynamics, the study of oscillatons through the kinetic defect measure, and an elementary construction of solutions to scalar conservation laws. More advanced material contains regularizing effects through averaging lemmas, existence of global large solutions to isentropic gas dynamics, and a new uniqueness proof for scalar conservation laws. Sections are also devoted to the derivation of numerical approaches, the 'kinetic schemes', and the analysis of their theoretical properties.

This selection of 8 papers discusses “Equations of Kinetic Physics” with emphasis on analysis, modelling and computing. The first 3 papers are on numerical methods for Vlasov-Poisson and Vlasov-Maxwell Equations — Comparison between Particles and Eulerian Methods (G Manfredi and M R Feix), Computing BGK Instability with Eulerian Codes (M R Feix, Pertrand & A Ghieco) and Coupling Particles and Eulerian Methods (S Mas-Gallic and P A Raviart) — Followed by a survey of kinetic and macroscopic models for semiconductor devices — Boltzmann Equation, Drift-Diffusion Models (F Poupaud). In addition, there are 2 papers on the modelling and analysis of singular perturbation problems arising in plasma physics — Derivation of the Child-Lagmuyr Emission Laws (P Degond) and Euler Models with Small Pressure Terms (F Bouchut) — followed by two papers on the analysis and numerical analysis of the Boltzmann equations — Symmetry Properties in the Polynomials Arising in Chapman-Enskog Expansion (L Desvillettes and F Golse) and A General Introduction to Computing the Boltzmann Equations with Random Particle Methods (B Perthame).