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Abstract

In this thesis, we study some linear and nonlinear problems involving differential forms. We begin by studying the problem of pullbacks which asks the following question: for two given differential forms, if one is the pullback of the other via a diffeomorphism satisfying some given condition. For volume forms, this problem was studied by Dacorogna-Moser giving a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of the diffeomorphism with precise regularity. Our goal is to extend this result for general k-forms. We have obtained some necessary and sufficient conditions for two-forms and for some special classes of k-forms with sharp regularity. Then we turn our attention to the problem of differential inclusions involving differential forms. Although for zero-forms, the problem has been extensively studied, essentially nothing was known for higher forms including the curl operator. In this direction, we have obtained some necessary and some sufficient conditions for general k-forms unifying the study of the different cases. Moreover, we show that these necessary and sufficient conditions coincide for k = 1, solving the case of curl operator fairly completely. Besides these problems, we have studied some domain invariance property of the weighted-homogenous and non-homogenous Hardy constants as well. We have showed that the Hardy constant corresponding to these classes of inequalities enjoy, to some extent, the same domain invariance property as that of the Hardy constant corresponding to the standard Hardy's inequality.

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