Universal attractor in \(H^4\) for the nonlinear one-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations (Q703826)

The author considers a system of partial differential equations related to one-dimensional gas dynamics \[ u_t- v_x= 0,\;v_t- \sigma_x= 0,\;(e+ v^2/2)_t- (\sigma v)_x+ Q_x= 0,\;x\in (0,1)\tag{1} \] supplied by the Claudius-Duhem inequality \(\eta_t+ (Q/\theta)_x\geq 0\) implied by the second law of thermodynamics. \(e,\sigma,Q,\eta\) are given by constitutive relations \(e= e(u,\theta)\), \(\sigma= \sigma(u,\theta, v_x)\), \(\eta= \eta(u,\theta)\), \(Q= Q(u,\theta,\theta_x)\) with \(u\), \(v\), \(\sigma\), \(e\), \(Q\), \(\eta\), \(\theta\) denoting specific volume, velocity, stress, internal energy, heat flux, specific entropy and absolute temperature, whereby \(u,\theta,e\geq 0\). One has initial conditions and two types of boundary conditions, one is: \[ v(0,t)= v(1,t)= 0,\;\theta(0,t)= \theta(1,t)= T_0= \text{const.}> 0,\;t> 0. \] The paper considers the case of a linearly viscous gas for which \[ \begin{gathered}\sigma(u, \theta, v_x)=- p(u,\theta)+ u^{-1}\mu(u, \theta)v_x,\\ Q(u,\theta, \theta_x)= -u^{-1} k(u,\theta)\theta_x.\end{gathered}\tag{2} \] The appearance of \(u^{-1}\) in (2) is a source of difficulties and explains the length of the paper, \(p\), \(k\), \(\mu\) are given functions which together with \(e(u,\theta)\) have to satisfy a number of growth conditions. In order to handle (1), metric spaces \(H^1_+\), \(H^2_+\), \(H^4_+\) are defined which take \(u> 0\) into account as required by (2). After an introduction, which discusses the previous work, the author states his main result. Theorem 1.1, which takes almost \(1{1\over 2}\) pages, can only be outlined. It states that under the various assumptions any initial condition \((u_0,v_0,\theta_0)\) in \(H^4_+\) gives rise to a unique global solution \((u,v,\theta)\) in \(C([0,\infty), H^4_+)\) such that \[ 0< C^{-1}\leq\theta(x,t)\leq C,\;0< C^{-1}\leq u(x, t)\leq C,\;t> 0 \] for some \(C> 0\). Furthermore, the asymptotic behaviour of the solution is described in terms of various inequalities. Corollary 1.1 asserts that the nonlinear semigroup \(S(t)\) induced by (1) via Theorem 1.1 is exponentially stable. Theorem 1.2 finally asserts the existence of a maximal attractor. The difficulties which have to be mastered in the proofs of the above statements are considerable. The proof of lemma 3.1, which establishes the existence of the semigroup \(S(t)\) takes 15 pages.