Uniqueness of conservative solutions to the two-component Camassa-Holm system via characteristics (Q344381)

The two-component Camassa-Holm system was derived as a model for shallow water waves. The system possesses global-in-time solutions for some sets of initial data and wave-breaking solutions for the other sets of initial data. The paper addresses the question on uniqueness of the solutions after wave breaking. There are two possible scenarios of the wave behaviour after the breaking time. The first one suggests energy loss at the breaking time. The second one proposes a switching phenomenon: the waves pass through each other, each continuing as a solitary wave, with the preservation of energy. In this paper, the authors show uniqueness of the global conservative weak solutions by modifying some arguments from the recent paper of \textit{A. Bressan} et al. [Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 35, No. 1, 25--42 (2015; Zbl 1304.35017)]. In particular, the method of generalized characteristics has been used for a direct proof of the uniqueness.