A contractive metric for systems of conservation laws with coinciding shock and rarefaction curves (Q1318259)

The author considers the Cauchy problem for strictly hyperbolic \(n \times n\) systems of conservation laws (1) \(u_ t + F(u)_ x = 0\). The aim of this paper is to introduce a metric which is equivalent to the usual \(L_ 1\)-distance and to construct a contractive semigroup which solves the above Cauchy problem. Let \(\lambda_ i (\omega)\) \((i = 1,2, \dots,n)\) be eigenvalues of \(A (\omega) = F' (\omega)\) and \(r_ i (\omega)\) the corresponding right eigenvectors of \(A(\omega)\). For a function \(f(\omega)\) defined on \(\mathbb{R}^ n\), its directional derivative along the vector \(r_ i (\omega)\), denoted by \((r_ i \circ f) (\omega)\), is defined as follows: \[ (r_ i \circ f) (\omega) = \lim \biggl[ f \bigl( \omega + hr_ i (\omega) \bigr) - f (\omega) \biggr] h^{-1} = \bigl[ Df (\omega) \bigr] r_ i. \] The principal result is that, if (1) is strictly hyperbolic and \((r_ i \circ r_ i) (\omega) = 0\) for \(i = 1,2, \dots,n\), then the author can obtain his above aim. For \(n=2\), the author proves the same result under the condition \((r_ i \circ r_ i) (\omega) = 0\) or \((r_ i \circ \lambda_ i) (\omega) = 0\) \((i = 1,2)\). This is the case where a shock curve coincides with a rarefaction curve [\textit{B. Temple}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 280, 781-795 (1983; Zbl 0559.35046)].