Refined pointwise estimates for solutions to the 1D barotropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations: an application to the long-time behavior of a point mass (Q2171713)

The paper deals with the long-time dynamics of a point mass immersed in a 1D compressible fluid which occupies the whole domain \(\mathbb R\). The emphasis is laid upon the optimality of the decay estimate provided in the previous work by the author [J. Differ. Equations 271, 356--413 (2021; Zbl 1455.35196)] -- it was proven, that the velocity of the point mass \(V(t)\) satisfies \(V(t)\leq C O(t^{3/2})\) for some \(C>1\) as \(t\) tends to infinity. The main result of this paper yields the existence of \(C>1\) such that \(C^{-1}O(t^{3/2})\leq V(t)\) assuming the initial condition is not equal the equilibrium state \(u\equiv 0\), \(\varrho \equiv 1\) (here \(u\) denotes the velocity of the fluid and \(\varrho\) denotes the density of the fluid). To prove the main claim, the author first establishes the notion of diffusion waves and of inter-diffusion waves. The main theorem then claims that, once the initial state is in a neighborhood of the equilibrium state, the solution to the Navier-Stokes equations is close to the diffusion and inter-diffusion waves.