On a model of phase relaxation for the hyperbolic Stefan problem (Q703665)

This very interesting paper treats the following phase transition model under the Cattaneo-Maxwell heat flux law \[ \partial _t (\theta + \chi) + \text{div} {\mathbf q} = f \quad \text{in} \;Q = \Omega \times (0,T), \] \[ \alpha \partial _t {\mathbf q} + {\mathbf q} = - \nabla \theta \quad \text{in} \;Q, \] \[ \varepsilon \partial _t \chi + \chi \in \gamma(\theta) \quad \text{in} \;Q, \] where \(\theta\) and \(\chi\) correspond respectively to the temperature and the order parameter of the substance, \(\alpha\), \(\varepsilon\) are small parameters. The ralaxation dynamics is justified on the basis of a probabilistic approach. The author proves existence and uniqueness results in appropriate Sobolev spaces of the corresponding Dirichlet-Neumann boundary value problem. An asymptotic analysis is carried out as the small parameters go to zero and it is shown that the solution converges to the solution of a Stefan problem.