Divergence-measure fields and hyperbolic conservation laws (Q1300662)

The authors study a class of vector fields \(F\in L^\infty(D,{\mathbb R}^N)\), \(D\subset{\mathbb R}^N\), such that \(\operatorname {div}F\) coincides some finite Borel measure in the sense of distributions. Such vector fields, called divergence-measure fields, are proved to take normal traces over subsets with Lipschitz boundaries and to satisfy analogs of the Gauss-Green formula and the product rule. Next in the paper these results are applied to the investigation of entropy solutions of initial-boundary-value problems for hyperbolic conservation laws. The authors study the ways in which solutions take their initial and boundary data. Those examples of conservation laws are considered which include multidimensional scalar equations, the system of nonlinear elasticity, and a class of \(m\times m\) systems with affine characteristic hypersurfaces. The analysis in \(L^\infty\) also extends to \(L^p\).