Geometrical optics approximation for general scalar conservation laws (Q1107033)

We consider hyperbolic scalar conservation laws where the flux function need not be convex. We treat the Cauchy problem associated with such a law. It is known that the entropy solution of the Cauchy problem admits rarefaction waves, shock waves and in addition contact discontinuities. The main of this paper is to propose an approximate solution to the Cauchy problem when the initial data is a small perturbation from a constant state. Such an approximation is given by means of nonlinear geometrical optics. This approximation, in general involves some nonuniformities. To remove them, we introduce appropriate slow time scales, the significance of which is explained. The simplification achieved in this approximation is that we transform the problem with arbitrary flux function to the one with polynomial flux function. This obviously simplifies the algebraic calculations that one may want to do in the phase space. We, next, obtain error estimates which justify the above approximation. For this, we make use of the energy estimates available in the system. The essential ingredients in estimating the error are the estimates of the maximal entropy production and decay estimates in the amplitude and total variation of suitable functional of the solution of the initial value problem. We show how to derive them using the entropy condition in a crucial manner. We observe that the error estimates so obtained are uniform in time. This is in sharp contrast to the case of linear geometrical optics approximation where the error typically grows linearly in time.