Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves

© 2016, Springer International Publishing AG. In an influential 1964 article, P. Lax studied 2 × 2 genuinely nonlinear strictly hyperbolic PDE systems (in one spatial dimension). Using the method of Riemann invariants, he showed that a large set of smooth initial data lead to bounded solutions whose...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Speck, Jared, Holzegel, Gustav, Luk, Jonathan, Wong, Willie
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133378
_version_ 1826205620932444160
author Speck, Jared
Holzegel, Gustav
Luk, Jonathan
Wong, Willie
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Speck, Jared
Holzegel, Gustav
Luk, Jonathan
Wong, Willie
author_sort Speck, Jared
collection MIT
description © 2016, Springer International Publishing AG. In an influential 1964 article, P. Lax studied 2 × 2 genuinely nonlinear strictly hyperbolic PDE systems (in one spatial dimension). Using the method of Riemann invariants, he showed that a large set of smooth initial data lead to bounded solutions whose first spatial derivatives blow up in finite time, a phenomenon known as wave breaking. In the present article, we study the Cauchy problem for two classes of quasilinear wave equations in two spatial dimensions that are closely related to the systems studied by Lax. When the data have one-dimensional symmetry, Lax’s methods can be applied to the wave equations to show that a large set of smooth initial data lead to wave breaking. Here we study solutions with initial data that are close, as measured by an appropriate Sobolev norm, to data belonging to a distinguished subset of Lax’s data: the data corresponding to simple plane waves. Our main result is that under suitable relative smallness assumptions, the Lax-type wave breaking for simple plane waves is stable. The key point is that we allow the data perturbations to break the symmetry. Moreover, we give a detailed, constructive description of the asymptotic behavior of the solution all the way up to the first singularity, which is a shock driven by the intersection of null (characteristic) hyperplanes. We also outline how to extend our results to the compressible irrotational Euler equations. To derive our results, we use Christodoulou’s framework for studying shock formation to treat a new solution regime in which wave dispersion is not present.
first_indexed 2024-09-23T13:15:59Z
format Article
id mit-1721.1/133378
institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
language English
last_indexed 2024-09-23T13:15:59Z
publishDate 2021
publisher Springer Science and Business Media LLC
record_format dspace
spelling mit-1721.1/1333782024-01-03T18:30:33Z Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves Speck, Jared Holzegel, Gustav Luk, Jonathan Wong, Willie Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics © 2016, Springer International Publishing AG. In an influential 1964 article, P. Lax studied 2 × 2 genuinely nonlinear strictly hyperbolic PDE systems (in one spatial dimension). Using the method of Riemann invariants, he showed that a large set of smooth initial data lead to bounded solutions whose first spatial derivatives blow up in finite time, a phenomenon known as wave breaking. In the present article, we study the Cauchy problem for two classes of quasilinear wave equations in two spatial dimensions that are closely related to the systems studied by Lax. When the data have one-dimensional symmetry, Lax’s methods can be applied to the wave equations to show that a large set of smooth initial data lead to wave breaking. Here we study solutions with initial data that are close, as measured by an appropriate Sobolev norm, to data belonging to a distinguished subset of Lax’s data: the data corresponding to simple plane waves. Our main result is that under suitable relative smallness assumptions, the Lax-type wave breaking for simple plane waves is stable. The key point is that we allow the data perturbations to break the symmetry. Moreover, we give a detailed, constructive description of the asymptotic behavior of the solution all the way up to the first singularity, which is a shock driven by the intersection of null (characteristic) hyperplanes. We also outline how to extend our results to the compressible irrotational Euler equations. To derive our results, we use Christodoulou’s framework for studying shock formation to treat a new solution regime in which wave dispersion is not present. 2021-10-27T19:52:26Z 2021-10-27T19:52:26Z 2016 2021-04-28T16:52:19Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133378 en 10.1007/S40818-016-0014-4 Annals of PDE [21992576] Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC arXiv
spellingShingle Speck, Jared
Holzegel, Gustav
Luk, Jonathan
Wong, Willie
Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title_full Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title_fullStr Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title_full_unstemmed Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title_short Stable Shock Formation for Nearly Simple Outgoing Plane Symmetric Waves
title_sort stable shock formation for nearly simple outgoing plane symmetric waves
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133378
work_keys_str_mv AT speckjared stableshockformationfornearlysimpleoutgoingplanesymmetricwaves
AT holzegelgustav stableshockformationfornearlysimpleoutgoingplanesymmetricwaves
AT lukjonathan stableshockformationfornearlysimpleoutgoingplanesymmetricwaves
AT wongwillie stableshockformationfornearlysimpleoutgoingplanesymmetricwaves