Mechanism of singularity formation for quasilinear hyperbolic systems with linearly degenerate characteristic fields (Q639482)

The author gives a discussion about the conjecture of \textit{A. Majda} [Compressible fluid flow and systems of conservation laws in several space variables. Applied Mathematical Sciences, 53. New York etc.: Springer-Verlag (1984; Zbl 0537.76001)] for blow-up solutions. One considers a 1-dimensional quasilinear hyperbolic systems \(u_t +A(u)u_x =F(u)\), where the value of \(u(t,x)\) is an \(n\)-dimensional vector, and \(A(u)\) is an \(n\times n\) matrix. One assumes that \(A(u)\) has \(n\) distinct real eigenvalues, and that all the characteristics are lineraly degenerate in the sense of P.~Lax. Then one gives a initial value \(u(0,x)=u_0 (x)\) which has bounded \(C^1\) norm. Majda conjectured that if a \(C^1\) solution \(u\) of this Cauchy problem blows up in a finite time \(T_*\), then its \(C^0\) norm should blow up also at \(T_*\). Several equivalent expression of this conjecture are already known, and the author gives another new equivalent one. Roughly speaking, his conjecture means that if \(\text{supp}\;u_0\) is compact and the \(C^0\) norm of the solution is uniformly bounded for \(0\leq t\leq T\), then its \(W^{1,p}\) norm should be uniformly bounded. This enables one to use the energy method for this problem. The author also gives a generalization of his theory to the case of weakly hyperbolic equations, together with a generalization of his a priori estimate. He shows that for the Kerr-Debey system his conjecture is true, and thus so is Majda's one.