Larson-Penston self-similar gravitational collapse (Q2050071)

The authors consider the gravitational Euler-Poisson system written in spherical coordinates as \(\frac{\partial \varrho }{\partial t}+(\partial _{r}+ \frac{2}{r})(\varrho u)=0\), \(\varrho (\partial _{t}u+u\partial _{r}u)+\partial _{r}p+\varrho \frac{m(t,r)}{r^{2}}=0\), where \(\varrho \) is the gas density, \(p\) the pressure, \(u\) the radial velocity and \( m(t,r)=\int_{0}^{r}4\pi \sigma ^{2}(t,\sigma )d\sigma \). They impose the isothermal equation of state \(p=k\varrho \), with \(k>0\), \(\sqrt{k}\) being the speed of sound. Looking for a self-similar solution \(\varrho (t,r)=(\sqrt{2 \pi }t)^{-2}\widetilde{\rho }(y)\), \(u(t,r)=\sqrt{k}\widetilde{u}(y)\), \(y= \frac{r}{-\sqrt{k}t}\) and introducing the relative velocity \(\widetilde{ \omega }=\frac{\widetilde{u}(y)+y}{y}\), they end with the Euler-Poisson problem \(\widetilde{\rho }^{\prime }=-\frac{2y\widetilde{\omega }\widetilde{ \rho }}{1-y^{2}\widetilde{\omega }^{2}}\), \(\widetilde{\omega }^{\prime }= \frac{1-3\widetilde{\omega }}{y}+\frac{2y\widetilde{\omega }^{2}}{1-y^{2} \widetilde{\omega }^{2}}(\widetilde{\rho }-\widetilde{\omega })\), where the \( ^{\prime }\) means the derivative \(\partial _{y}\). They add the initial conditions \(\widetilde{\omega }(0)=1\), \(\widetilde{\rho }(0)>0\) and the solution must satisfy \(\widetilde{\rho }(y)\sim _{y\rightarrow \infty }y^{-2} \), \(\lim_{y\rightarrow \infty }\widetilde{\omega }(y)=1\). They define the notion of sonic point as \(y^{\ast }>0\) satisfying \((\widetilde{\rho }(\cdot ),\widetilde{\omega }(\cdot ))\) if \(1-y_{\ast }^{2}\widetilde{\omega } ^{2}(y_{\ast })=0\). The main result of the paper proves the existence of a point \(y^{\ast }\in (2,3)\) such that the Euler-Poisson system possesses a real-analytic solution \((\widetilde{\rho },\widetilde{\omega })\) with a single sonic point at \(y^{\ast }\). This solution satisfies the Larson-Penston expansion at \(y=y^{\ast }\) and \(\widetilde{\rho }(y)>0\), \(- \frac{2}{3}y\leq \widetilde{u}(y)<0\), \(y\in \lbrack 0,\infty )\). For the proof, the authors first introduce new changes of variables. They build upper and lower solutions. They prove local existence, uniqueness, and regularity theorems for Larson-Penston-type solutions locally around the sonic point and they establish properties of such solutions.