Pavel M. Lushnikov
University of New Mexico

"Nonlinear waves and singularities in nonlinear optics, plasmas, hydrodynamics and biology"

Abstract Many nonlinear partial differential equations have a striking phenomenon of spontaneous formation of singularities in a finite time (blow up). Blow up is often accompanied by a dramatic contraction of the spatial extent of solution, which is called by collapse. Near singularity point there is usually a qualitative change in underlying nonlinear phenomena, reduced models loose their applicability with diverse singularity regularization mechanisms become important such as optical breakdown and formation of plasma in nonlinear optical media, excluded volume constraints in bacterial aggregation or dissipation of breaking water waves. Collapses occur in numerous physical and biological systems including a nonlinear Schrodinger equation, Keller-Segel equation, Davey–Stewartson equation and many others. Wavebreaking is another example of spontaneous formation of singularities corresponding to the breaking of initially smooth smooth fluid's free surface. It can be reduced to the motion of complex singularities outside of fluid with wavebreaking resulting from the approach of these singularities to the free surface. The recent progress in collapse theory will be reviewed with multiple applications ranging from laser fusion to bacterial dynamics addressed.