Propagation of oscillations in real vanishing viscosity limit (Q1885643)

The paper concerns viscous perturbations of quasilinear singular hyperbolic systems in several space dimensions, the viscosity \(\mu\) being allowed (at worst) to be of the order of \(\varepsilon^2\), where \(\varepsilon\) is the singular parameter -- the equations involving terms in \(\varepsilon^{-1}\) and \(\varepsilon^{-2}\). The rather complicated abstract form of the equations under consideration is shown to be applicable to large-scale motion in the atmosphere (geostrophic approximation), and to a more theoretical problem (non-linear geometrical optics). Under various structural and stability assumptions, the author proves the existence of smooth solutions on a time interval \([0,T]\) independent of \(\varepsilon\), which compare with some reference solutions by an \({\mathcal O}(\varepsilon^2)\) estimate in \({\mathcal C}(0,T;H^s({\mathbb T} \times {\mathbb R}^d))\), \(s>(d+3)/2\). One of the major difficulties is that the linearized equations involve a non-skewsymmetric operator \(\varepsilon^{-1} B\), as in the earlier work by the author together with \textit{O. Guès} and \textit{G. Métivier} [Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér., IV. Sér. 36, No. 5, 691--745 (2003; Zbl 1091.35039)], where they addressed the inviscid case and exhibited exponentially growing instabilities of the form \(e^{ \gamma t/\varepsilon}\) (\(\gamma>0\)). Here the (small) viscosity makes the situation better.