Shock wave admissibility for quadratic conservation laws (Q1891314)

The authors consider shock wave solutions \(U= U(x, t)\) of systems of conservation laws of the form \[ U_t+ F(U)_x= 0,\tag{1} \] where the flux function \(F: \mathbb{R}^2\to \mathbb{R}^2\) is taken to be quadratic. Typically, such systems change type from hyperbolic to elliptic, due to the characteristic speeds becoming a complex conjugate pair. The authors adopt the viscosity criterion, which they formulate as requiring that a shock wave be the limit as \(\varepsilon\to 0+\) of travelling wave solutions of the system \[ U_t+ F(U)_x= \varepsilon(D(U) U_x)_x,\tag{2} \] where \(D= D(U)\) is a matrix valued function of \(U\) known as the viscosity matrix. The results concern the stability, meaning continuous dependence on parameters, of admissible shock waves. The authors study the structural stability of a variety of phase portraits in the plane; heteroclinic orbits in the phase portraits represent the travelling waves. The study is performed in the context of the fundamental wave manifold, which for shock waves is the set of solutions of the Rankine- Hugoniot compatibility conditions. Various bifurcations of vector fields are considered, and regions within the fundamental wave manifold are identified, corresponding to the various unfoldings of the corresponding singular vector fields. Of particular interest is the relationship between regions corresponding to admissible shocks and regions corresponding to shock waves satisfying the Lax entropy condition.