Linear stability analysis of travelling waves for a pseudoparabolic Burgers' equation (Q983136)

The author considers the linear stability of non-monotone travelling wave solutions of the pseudo-parabolic Burgers type equation \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=\frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x^2}+ 2u\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}+ \tau\frac{\partial^3 u}{\partial x^2 \partial t}\quad \text{in }\mathbb R \times\mathbb R^+ \;(\tau>0) \] with initial condition \(u(x,0)=u_0(x)\), \(x \in \mathbb{R}\), and \(u_0(x)\) is a bounded continuous function. The considered equation was introduced as a pilot-problem of the model of unsaturated groundwater flow. It is referred in the literature as the Benjamin-Bona-Mahony-Burgers' (BBM-Burgers) equation. The most part of the paper is devoted to prove that the linear stability is determined by the spectrum of the linearised operator. This step is necessary since the linearised operator does not fall into the class of sectorial operators, for which the corresponding result is well known. An Evans function is defined and used to search for instabilities numerically. The numerical results yield the conclusion that no eigenvalues with positive real part appear and hence that stability of the waves holds.