Multiple Riemann wave solutions of the general form of quasilinear hyperbolic systems (Q2083433)

The authors consider the quasi-linear first-order system of \(q\) equations in \(p\) independent variables \(\sum_{i=1}^{p}A^{i}(u)\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_{i}}=0\), \(i=1\ldots p\), where \(u=(u^{1},\ldots,u^{q})\in U\subset \mathbb{R}^{q} \) and \(A^{1},\ldots ,A^{p}\) are \(q\times q\) matrices. They define a Riemann wave solution to this system defined in a neighborhood of \(x=0\) as a solution to the equation \(u=f(r(x,u))\), where the functions \(f:\mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{q}\) and \(r:\mathbb{R}^{p+q}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) are given by \(r(x,u)=\sum_{i=1}^{p}\lambda _{i}(u)x^{i}\), the solution \(u\) satisfying, through the implicit function theorem and in a neighborhood of \(x=0\) : \(\frac{\partial u^{\alpha }}{\partial x^{i}}(x)=\phi (x)^{-1}\lambda _{i}(u(x))\frac{df^{\alpha }}{dr}(r(x,u(x)))\), \(i=1,\ldots ,p\), \(\alpha =1,\ldots ,q\), where \(\phi (x)=1-\sum_{\alpha =1}^{q}\frac{\partial r}{ \partial u^{\alpha }}(x,u(x))dfdr(r(x;u(x)))\). The function \(r\) is a Riemann invariant associated to the non-zero wave vector \(\lambda =(\lambda _{1},\ldots ,\lambda _{p}):\mathbb{R}^{p}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{q}\), satisfying \(ker(\sum_{i=1}^{p}\lambda _{i}(u)A^{i}(u))\neq 0\). The authors first analyze the properties of the quasi-linear hyperbolic system \( \sum_{i=1}^{p}\sum_{\beta =1}^{q}A_{\beta }^{i\alpha }(x,u)u_{i}^{\beta }\), \( \alpha =1,\ldots ,q\), of its integral elements and of its \(k\)-wave solutions. They establish conditions which lead to the existence of a Riemann \(k\)-wave solution. The paper ends with the analysis of 2D examples.