Stability of contact discontinuities under perturbations of bounded variation (Q1373397)

The authors deal with a strictly hyperbolic system of conservation laws in one space dimension provided that there exists a linearly degenerate eigenvalue of the system and consequently contact discontinuity is possible. The Riemann problem is analysed for the states close to the stable contact discontinuities. Then initial data for the considered system are taken sufficiently close to a piecewise constant contact discontinuity. Existence of global weak solution to such a Cauchy problem is proved by means of Glimm's approximation scheme. Moreover for this solution the structure of contact discontinuity persists.