Asymptotic behavior of classical solutions of reducible quasilinear hyperbolic systems with characteristic boundaries (Q2518287)

This interesting paper is devoted to the theory of hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDE) of first order. Consider the quasilinear system of PDEs, written in general form, \[ {\partial u\over\partial t}+A(u){\partial u\over\partial x}=0, \] where \(u=(u_1,\dots,u_n)^T\) is the unknown vector-valued function of \((t,x)\), \(A(u)\) is an \(n\times n\) matrix. These systems contain conservation laws. The paper concerns the asymptotic behavior of classical solution of reducible quasilinear hyperbolic system with characteristic boundaries. The author studies the system, \[ {\partial r\over\partial t}+s{\partial r\over\partial x}=0, \] \[ {\partial s\over\partial t}+r{\partial s\over\partial x}=0 \] on the angular domain \(D=\{(t,x)| t\geq 0, \;x_1(t)\leq x\leq x_2(t)\}\), where \(x=x_i(t)\) (\(i=1,2\)) are the backward characteristic and forward characteristic passing through \(O(0,0)\) on \(x\) axis, which are defined by \[ {dx_1\over dt}=s, \;\;\;\;x_1(t)=0 \] and \[ {dx_2\over dt}=r, \;\;\;\;x_2(t)=0, \] respectively. The Goursat problem is posed by the conditions, \(s=s_0(t)\) on \(x=x_1(t)\) and \(r=r_0(t)\) on \(x=x_2(t)\). The main result of this paper is that under some assumptions as \(r_0(0), s_0(0)\in C^1(\mathbb R)\), \(r_0'>0, s_0'<0\) and boundedness in \(C^0\)-norm there exists a unique Lipschitz continuous vector-valued function \(\tilde\varphi = (\tilde\varphi_1,\tilde\varphi_2)^T\), such that \[ \int_{\tau }^{\infty }|r(t,x)-\tilde\varphi_1(x-s_0(0)t)|dt < +\infty , \] \[ \int_{\tau }^{\infty }|s(t,x)-\tilde\varphi_2(x-r_0(0)t)|dt < +\infty, \] for some \(\tau \geq 0\), where \(\tau =x_1^{-1}(x)\) (\( x<0\)) while \(\tau =x_2^{-1}(x)\) (\(x\geq 0\)), and \(\tilde\varphi \) is \(C^1\)-function defined in \((-\infty , 0)\) and \((0, +\infty )\), respectively. In other words the solution approaches a combination of Lipschitz continuous and piecewise \(C^1\) traveling wave solution. As an application, this theory is applied to the equation for time-like extremal surfaces in the Minkowski space-time \(\mathbb R^{1+(1+n)}\) under the metric \(ds^2=-dx_0^2+dx_1^2+\cdots + dx_{n+1}^2\), where \(x_0=t\) is the time and other variables are the components in the \(n+1\) dimensional space.