Hysteresis effects occur in science and engineering: plasticity,
ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity are well-known examples. Modelling and
mathematical analysis of hysteresis phenomena have been addressed by
mathematicians only recently, but are now in full development.
This volume provides a self-contained and comprehensive introduction to
the analysis of hysteresis models, and illustrates several new results
in this field. First the classical models of Prandtl, Ishlinskii,
Preisach and Duhem are formulated and studied, using the concept of
"hysteresis operator". A new model of discontinuous hysteresis is
introduced. Several partial differential equations containing hysteresis
operators are studied in the framework of Sobolev spaces.