Conservation laws with a degenerate source: traveling waves, large-time behavior and zero relaxation limit (Q2581726)

The authors of this interesting paper consider a hyperbolic conservation law with a nonlinear source term, \[ u_t+f(u)_x=g^{-1}g(u), \;\;u\in \mathbb R, \;\;\alpha ,\beta \geq 1 \] where \(g(u)=u| u| ^{\alpha -1}(1-u^2)| 1-u^2| ^{\beta -1}\). The flux \(f(u)\) is convex, and the space variable \(x\) is either considered on the whole real line or on the circle \(S^1\). The large time behavior and zero reaction time limits of solutions are studied. It is shown that the solutions with periodic boundary conditions tend to stable and unstable zeros of the source terms at \(t\to \infty \). Patterns of traveling waves of the systems and the conditions under which they exist are provided. A result of interest is that the structure of traveling waves and the long-time behavior are different from the case with non-degenerate zeros.