Search

A classical result of K. L. Chung and W. Feller deals with the partial sums S k S_k arising in a fair coin-tossing game. If N n N_n is the number of “positive” terms among S 1 S_1 , S 2 S_2 , …, S n S_n then the quantity P ( N 2 n = 2 r ) P(N_{2n} = 2r) takes an elegant form. We lift the restriction on an even number of tosses and give a simple expression for P ( N 2 n + 1 = r ) P(N_{2n+1} = r) , r = 0 r = 0 , 1 1 , 2 2 , …, 2 n + 1 2n+1 . We get to this ansatz by adaptating the Feynman–Kac methodology.

We show that a relative entropy condition recently shown by Leger and Vasseur to imply uniqueness and stable $L^2$ dependence on initial data of Lax 1- or $n$-shock solutions of an $n\times n$ system of hyperbolic conservation laws with convex entropy implies Lopatinski stability in the sense of Majda. This means in particular that Leger and Vasseur's relative entropy condition represents a considerable improvement over the standard entropy condition of decreasing shock strength and increasing entropy along forward Hugoniot curves, which, in a recent example exhibited by Barker, Freist\"uhler and Zumbrun, was shown to fail to imply Lopatinski stability, even for systems with convex entropy. This observation bears also on the parallel question of existence, at least for small $BV$ or $H^s$ perturbations, Comment: to appear in Proceedings of the AMS

In a recent paper, Chao-Ping Chen and Feng Qi (2005) established sharp upper and lower bounds for the sequence P n := 1.3 … ( 2 n − 1 ) 2.4 … 2 n P_{n}:=\frac {1.3\ldots (2n-1)}{2.4\ldots 2n} . We show that their result follows easily from a theorem of G. N Watson published in 1959. We also show that the main result of Chen and Qi’s paper is a special case of a more general inequality which admits a very short proof.

Concerns have been voiced about the correctness of certain technical points in DiPerna’s paper (Comm. Math. Phys. 91 (1983), 1–30) related to the vacuum state. In this note, we provide clarifications. Our conclusion is that these concerns mainly arise from the statement of a lemma for constructing the viscous approximate solutions and some typos; however, the gap can be either fixed by correcting the statement of the lemma and the typos or bypassed by employing the finite difference methods. In [Di], DiPerna found a global entropy solution of the isentropic Euler equations for the following exponents in the equation of state for the pressure: γ = 1 + 2/(2m+ 1), m ≥ 2 integer. (1) He divided his arguments into the following two steps. 1. Compactness framework Assume that a sequence of approximate solutions (ρ (x, t),m (x, t)), 0 ≤ t ≤ T , satisfies: (i). There exists a constant C(T ) > 0, independent of > 0, such that 0 ≤ ρ (x, t) ≤ C, |m (x, t)/ρ (x, t)| ≤ C; (ii). For all weak entropy pairs (η, q) of the isentropic Euler equations, the measure sequence η(ρ ,m )t + q(ρ ,m )x is contained in a compact subset of H −1 loc (R× [0, T ]). If γ satisfies (1), then the sequence (ρ (x, t),m (x, t)) is compact in Lloc(R× [0, T ]). The reason for the restriction on the number γ is that, in such a case, any weak entropy function is a polynomial function of the Riemann invariants (w, z). This is the key step in DiPerna’s arguments and is also his main contribution to the compensated compactness method in this aspect. Received by the editors May 16, 1996. 1991 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 35K55, 35L65; Secondary 76N15, 35L60, 65M06.