An Overview of the Obstacle Problem Donatella Danielli 1. Introduction air, or water and ice. In addition to the usually prescribed Free Boundary Problems naturally occur in physics and en- initial and boundary values, other conditions, arising from gineering when a conserved quantity or relation changes the physical laws governing the model, are imposed at the discontinuously across some value of the variables under free boundary. Since in general, with few exceptions, it is consideration. In mathematical terms, they consist in solv- impossible to explicitly determine the solution and the un- ing partial differential equations (PDEs) in a domain, a derlying domain, the ultimate goal consists in establishing part of whose boundary is a priori unknown, and which analytic and geometric properties for both. In the past few has to be determined as part of the problem. Said portion decades this area of research has seen deep and broad ad- of the boundary is called the free boundary, and in models vancements, due to the assimilation of problems coming it appears, for instance, as the interface between a fluid and from other applied sciences, such as finance, mathematical biology, and population dynamics, just to name a few. Its Donatella Danielli is a professor of mathematics at Purdue University. Her development has been intrinsically intertwined with the email address is
[email protected]. theory of Variational Inequalities, born in Italy in the early Communicated by Notices Associate Editor Daniela De Silva. 1960s. Its founding fathers were Guido Stampacchia, who was motivated by questions in potential theory, and Gae- For permission to reprint this article, please contact:
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