Viscous singular shock profiles for a system of conservation laws modeling two-phase flow (Q288739)

The author proves the existence of viscous profiles for singular shocks in the self-similar regularization (or Dafermos regularization) \[ \begin{aligned} \beta_t +(vB_1(\beta))_x & = \varepsilon t \beta_{xx}\\ v_t + (v^2B_2(\beta))_x & = \varepsilon tv_{xx} \end{aligned} \] of a system of nonhyperbolic conservation laws. This leads to a singularly perturbed ODE with two fast and three slow variables. The author is able to show that for Riemann data within some part of the overcompressive shock region there exist exact self-similar wave solutions that become unbounded as \(\varepsilon\searrow 0\). More precisely, the maximum of these solutions behaves like \(\mathcal{O}(e^{c/\varepsilon})\). To treat this analytically delicate question tools from geometric singular perturbation theory (Fenichel theorems, exchange lemmas) are combined with a change of variables that turns infinity into a pair of new fixed points and the use of Shilnikov coordinates in order to control the trajectories passing close to these fixed points.