Refined wave-tracking and nonlinear stability of viscous Lax shocks (Q1601161)

The stability of a steady state solution \(\bar{u}(x)\) to the system \(u_t +f(u)_x =(B(u)u_x)_x \) is studied under some hypotheses on \(f(u_{\pm})\), \(B(u_{\pm})\), where \(u_{\pm}=\) \(\lim \bar{u}(x)\) as \(x\to\pm\infty\). It is proved that there are a function \(\delta (t)\) and a small number \(\zeta _0\) such that \[ |u(x,t)-\bar{u}(x-\delta (t))|_{L^p}\leq c\zeta _0 (1+t)^{-\frac{1}{2}(1-\frac{1}{p})}, \] \[ |\dot{\delta }(t)|\leq c\zeta _0 (1+t)^{-\frac{1}{2}},\quad |\delta (t)|\leq c\zeta _0 , \] provided \[ |u_0 -\bar{u}|_{L^1}\leq\zeta _0 ,\quad |u_0 -\bar{u}|_{L^{\infty}}\leq\zeta _0 . \] Some more detailed analysis is performed in the case of a scalar equation.