MATH-UA.0263-1

Lectures and Assignments for

Partial Differential Equations

Warren Weaver Hall, room 101, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11am - 12:15pm
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University
 Spring Semester, 2020
Instructor: Aleksandar Donev



In the notes below I will refer to the textbook of Strauss as just PDE, of Logan as APDE (Applied PDE) and to the textbook of Griffiths/Dold/Sylvester as EPDE (Essential PDE). Homework will be due in class written neatly and stapled in order. Indicate your netid on the solution in addition to your name.

I have asked NYU ITS to record my lectures and post them on NYUClasses (click the Panopto tool in the menu on the left).

(1/28, 1/30, 2/4, 2/6) Introduction to PDEs

Review: Appendix A in APDE. Review eigenvalues/vectors and solving linear systems of ODEs using matrix decompositions.

(Due Tue Feb 11th) Homework 1: Intro to PDEs

(1/28) Lecture 1: What is a PDE and what can you do with it?

Reading: Sections 1.1 in PDE ;  Chapter 1 in EPDE; Section 1.1 in APDE.

(1/30) Lecture 2: Boundary and Initial Conditions

Reading: Sections 1.4 in PDE;  Chapter 2 in EPDE; and Section 2.1 in APDE.

(2/4 and 2/6) Lecture 3: Linear PDEs

Reading: Sections 1.6 in PDE ;  Chapters 2 in EPDE; and Section section 2.3 in APDE.

(2/11) Physical Origin of PDEs: Conservation Laws

Review: Appendix C in EPDE, and multivariable calculus including divergence, gradient, Laplacian, and Green's theorems. We will not cover boundary conditions in dimensions larger than one (pages 13-15).

(Due Thur Feb 20th) Homework 2: Conservation Laws

Reading:  The PDE book does not really use the phrase "conservation laws" but they are there -- Example 1 in Section 1.3 derives the advection eq. from conservation, and Example 4 in Section 1.3 derives the heat equation; The notes follow Sections 1.2 (also example 1.15) and 1.3 and  section 1.7 in APDE;  opening of section 3.2 and Section 3.2.1 in EPDE.
Note: If you are a science major, especially physics, read all of chapter 3 in EPDE and 1.4 in APDE; more advanced physics is in section 1.5 in APDE. Derivations of the wave equation for a string and a drum are given in Examples 2 and 3 in section 1.3 of PDE, while Example 7 talks about the Schrodinger equation (quantum mechanics).

(2/13) First-Order Linear PDEs: Characteristics

Review: Methods for solving simple ODEs, especially first order linear equations (integrating factors) and separable equations, also second-order constant-coefficient equations (see Appendix A of APDE).

Reading
: In this suggested order: Section 1.2 in PDE; Section 4.1 in EPDE and section on "The Method of Characteristics" in Section 1.2 of APDE.

(2/18) Classification of Second-Order PDEs

Reading: Section 1.6 in PDE. Section 4.2 in EPDE is the basis of my lecture but it simply states the results without deriving them. Instead, I suggest also reading section 1.9 in APDE, where the classification into  hyperbolic, parabolic and elliptic is justified from scratch. Section 4.3 in EPDE discussed higher-order equations briefly.

(Due Tue March 3rd) Homework 3: First Order PDEs and classification

(2/18 and 2/20) The Wave Equation

Reading: Section 2.1 in PDE; Section 2.2 in APDE, and example 4.5 in EPDE, and if you want more details, look at section 2.4 in the optional textbook of Olver available on SpringerLink.

(2/20) First-Order Nonlinear PDEs: Shocks

Reading: Section 14.1 in PDE. Characteristics in nonlinear equations are discussed in "Nonlinear Advection" in Section 1.2 of APDE, and opening of section 9.3 in EPDE, and, for yet more advanced material, section 9.3.1 in EPDE. This is more advanced material and will not be included in exams. We will not cover page 10.

(2/25) The Diffusion Equation

Reading:  Section 2.4 in PDE; Section 2.1 in APDE.

(2/27) Duhamel's Principle and Addendum

Reading: Section 3.3 in PDE; Section 2.5 of APDE; Section 3.3 in PDE discusses Duhamel's principle for the diffusion equation, and section 3.4 for the wave equation. The addendum to my notes give another way to think about this, which I will use in class to motivate the more formal derivation.

(Due Tuesday March 10th) Homework 4: The Wave and Diffusion Equations

(3/3) Midterm Review

(3/5) Properties of the Diffusion Equation

Here is also a summary of differences between advection/waves and diffusion.

Reading: Sections 2.3 and 2.5 in PDE; Chapter 7 in  EPDE. Section 2.3 in APDE (especially example 2.3). The maximum principle for the Laplace equation (similar to the heat equation) is derived in Theorem 1.23 in Section 1.8 of APDE.

(3/10) Distributions and the Delta "Function"

Reading: Distributions are discussed in section 12.1 in PDE, but not particularly clearly in my opinion. The delta "function" is explained very well in section 6.1 in the optional textbook of Olver freely available to you on SpringerLink. My lecture notes are based on this textbook but with some additional insights regarding Duhamel's principle.

Note: Distributions will not appear in the midterm and are advanced material for your own benefit.

Spring break (and Covid-19 outbreak)

(3/24, zoom) Review of Linear Algebra

I will not follow the textbooks here. Instead of directly starting with Fourier series, I will start by reviewing key concepts from abstract linear algebra, with a key emphasis on concepts that will generalize to function spaces, as we will need to solve PDEs. Appendix B in EPDE has a (somewhat overly specific) review of linear algebra.

(3/26, NYU Classes) Midterm

(3/31, zoom) Separation of Variables

Reading: I suggest starting from Section 4.1 in PDE and also Section 4.1 in APDE; a similar process is followed in 8.1 in EPDE. After this lecture you should be able to go through Section 4.2 in PDE (Neumann BCs) and for more advanced material also Seection 4.3 (Robin BCs). The beginning of section 4.1 in PDE and Example 4.5 in APDE covers the separation of variables for the wave equation, which you should go over (will also be covered in recitation). Note that both APDE/EPDE assume the Fourier series has been seen by the reader -- we will learn about Fourier series next but first we will motivate why we need to do it. A number of useful examples are worked out in Section 4.1 of APDE. Example 4.2 in APDE is a must for everyone, and more advanced students should study Remark 4.3.

(4/2, zoom) Fourier Series

Reading: My lecture will not directly follow any book. Having reviewed some abstract linear algebra, we will explain the concept of function spaces and orthogonal functions, see Section 5.3 in PDE and maybe also Section 5.3 in EPDE. Then we will cover Section 5.1 in PDE (see also Chapter 3 in APDE), focusing on Fourier Series. If we have time, I will also explain the Fourier transform on the whole real line, discussed in Section 2.7 in APDE (important for advanced students).

(Due Tue April 14th 11am on NYU Classes) Homework 5: Separation of Variables

(4/7, zoom) Convergence of Fourier Series

Reading: The mechanics of Fourier series are covered in Section 5.1 in PDE, but more insight is gained by using complex exponentials as in the last subsection of section 5.2 in PDE on "The Complex Form". The basic theorems about convergence of Fourier series are given in Section 3.2 of APDE, in particular the section on Convergence. But a much more detailed and more pedagogical discussion can be found in section 3.5 in the optional textbook of Olver freely available to you on SpringerLink. Advanced students can also consult Chapter 9 of the Olver book for a more general treatment of operators and their eigenspaces.

(4/9, zoom) Inhomogeneous BCs and Sources

We will briefly discuss how to convert inhomogeneous BCs into Laplace equations, which we will study later. We already discussed how to handle sources in unbounded domains (recall Duhamel's principle) but here we will cover bounded domains.

Reading: Inhomogeneous BCs are covered in section 5.6 in PDE. Sources and inhomogeneous BCs for the heat equation are discussed in Section 4.7 of APDE, and also in Section 8.1.2 of EPDE (in more generality).

(4/14) Sturm-Liouville Problems

Reading: These are only briefly mentioned in Section 11.4 in PDE. My lecture follows more or less Chapter 5 of EPDE, although several of the sections there were covered earlier -- this lecture focuses on sections 5.3.1, 5.3.2 and 5.4. In APDE, SL problems are discussed in Section 4.2 and 4.3. Both texts discuss weighted SL problems, which we will not do in class, but advanced students should examine that. Note that solving SL problems on paper is often hard and we will do it using computers later on.

(Extended to Tue May 5th) Homework 6: Separation of Variables Continued

(4/16) Laplace and Poisson Equations

Reading: My lecture follows more or less Section 8.3 of EPDE, which is also (crammed) in Section 6.2 of PDE. Some more advanced material can be found under "General Results for Laplace's Equation" in section 4.4 of APDE (the example in section 4.5 will be covered in recitation), and for more advanced material on the Poisson equation see Section 4.8 in APDE.

(4/21 and 4/23 and 4/28) Review for Final (post-midterm)

In the second part of the review we focus on post-midterm material, notably, method of separation of variables for second-order PDEs in a finite domain with Dirichlet, Neumann or periodic boundary conditions. Focus should be on the heat and Poisson equations.

(4/30) Review for Final (pre-midterm)

This focuses on pre-midterm material: method of characteristics (change of coordinates) for first-order PDEs and wave equations, heat equation on the whole real line. Practice problems are suggested..

(skipped) Solving ODEs using Maple & Matlab

Before we try to solve PDEs using Maple & Matlab we need to review how to solve ODEs numerically. I will rely on notes from my ODE class for this, also see these brief notes on Euler's method (which should be familar to most everyone already).

(1) Using Maple (symbolic algebra tool with some numerical abilities, similar are Mathematica and Sage)
Here is a Maple script (execute 'xmaple ODE_Maple.mw'). Here is a PDF and an html version.

(2) Using Matlab (interpreted language for numerical computing, similar in some ways to using scipy+numpy in python but generally easier to use for beginners)
Here is a Matlab script ODE_Matlab.m (run matlab and then execute 'ODE_Matlab') which solves the pendulum equation studied using Maple above, both using built-in methods and from scratch using Euler's method. And here is a more advanced script PredatorPrey.m to solve the Lotka-Volterra equations.

(skipped) Solving PDEs using Maple

Here is a Maple worksheet (Maple, PDF, html) showcasing some of the power (and limitations) of the PDETools package, focusing on analytical solutions and the facilities for plotting/animating those solutions. One of the problems I try to solve there using Maple is Problem 9 in section 4.7 of APDE.

And here is a Maple worksheet (Maple, PDF, html) showing how to solve PDEs numerically with Maple (better done with Matlab), at this point without really knowing how Maple does this beyond the basic idea that there is a space and time step size that need to be set correctly.

(4/30) Discrete Sine Transform

Reading: None; we will need this to do numerical methods for solving the heat equation in an interval later on.

IMPORTANT: Obtain access to MATLAB for NYU as it will be required for the last homework.
Maple is not available freely everywhere at NYU but is available at Courant.

(5/5 and 5/7) Solving PDEs using Matlab

We start by simply using Matlab to evaluate and plot the analytical series solution we got in class and from Maple. Just run HeatAnalytical from the Matlab command line.

In the code HeatNumerical we obtain the same solution numerically using the Discrete Sine Transform (DST), as implemented in the Matlab PDE toolbox function dst. The main difference with the analytical code above is that now we obtain the Fourier coefficients not by doing an analytical integral but rather by doing a discrete sum. That is, we have now completely converted the problem from a PDE to a system of ODEs, which here is trivial to solve since the ODEs are uncoupled and simple linear first-order ODEs that have a solution exp(-lambda^2*t) that we know and can use; no time stepping like Euler's method is needed here. The method we have implemented here is called a spectral method and is in fact the best method there is for solving a linear PDE with simple boundary conditions. Note that for periodic solutions the DST is replaced by the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), which is why you will see calls to fft and ifft in the example below.

As an example of what a real "state-of-the-art" code to solve a nonlinear PDE may look like, here is a pseudospectral code to solve the KdV equation (u_t+uu_x+u_xxx=0) written by A. K. Kassam and L. N. Trefethen with some small changes by me. It illustrates soliton solutions but you can easily change the initial condition as shown. It uses a fancy "exponential integrator" method for time stepping a system of ODEs in time. Here is some explanation of the method used here and a simpler code (but less accurate!) that solves the last problem in the Maple worksheet NumericalSolutions (PDF, html) from the previous lecture and makes the animation that we couldn't get in Maple.

(Optional and not graded) Homework 7: Numerical Methods for PDEs

(5/14, 10-11:50am) Final Exam