A case study of global stability of strong rarefaction waves for \(2\times 2\) hyperbolic conservation laws with artificial viscosity (Q2506392)

The authors of this very interesting paper study the Cauchy problem for a \(p\)-system with artificial viscosity, which contains two conservation laws, \[ v_t-u_x=\varepsilon_1v_{xx}, \] \[ u_t+p(v)_x=\varepsilon_2u_{xx}, \] \[ (v,u)| _{t=0}=(v_0,u_0)(x)\to (v_{\pm },u_{\pm }), \quad \text{as } x\to \pm \infty , \] where \(\varepsilon_1, \varepsilon_2>0\), \(p(v)\) is a smooth function defined on the set \(\{v>0\}\), \(p^{\prime }(v)<0\), \(p^{\prime \prime }(v)>0\) for \(v>0\). This problem is connected with the Riemann problem, that is, \(\varepsilon_1= \varepsilon_2=0\) with the initial condition \( (v,u)| _{t=0}=(v_0^R,u_0^R)(x) \), where \((v_0^R,u_0^R)(x)=(v_{- },u_{-})\), for \(x<0\), and \((v_0^R,u_0^R)(x)=(v_{+ },u_{+})\), for \(x>0\). The case when the Riemann problem admits a unique global weak solution called rarefaction wave is of special interest here. The main result of the paper is the existence of a unique global smooth solution for the considered Cauchy problem provided that the initial function satisfies a certain condition. Two basic cases are considered \(\varepsilon_1\neq \varepsilon_2\) and \(\varepsilon_1 = \varepsilon_2\) as the initial functions satisfy some \(H^1\) estimates.