Stability of undercompressive shock profiles

Abstract Using a simplified pointwise iteration scheme, we establish nonlinear phase-asymptotic orbital stability of large-amplitude Lax, undercompressive, overcompressive, and mixed under–overcompressive type shock profiles of strictly parabolic systems of conservation laws with respect to initial perturbations | u 0 ( x ) | ⩽ E 0 ( 1 + | x | ) − 3 / 2 in C 0 + α , E 0 sufficiently small, under the necessary conditions of spectral and hyperbolic stability together with transversality of the connecting profile. This completes the program initiated by Zumbrun and Howard in [K. Zumbrun, P. Howard, Pointwise semigroup methods and stability of viscous shock waves, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 47 (4) (1998) 741–871], extending to the general undercompressive case results obtained for Lax and overcompressive shock profiles in [A. Szepessy, Z. Xin, Nonlinear stability of viscous shock waves, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 122 (1993) 53–103; T.-P. Liu, Pointwise convergence to shock waves for viscous conservation laws, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 50 (11) (1997) 1113–1182; K. Zumbrun, P. Howard, Pointwise semigroup methods and stability of viscous shock waves, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 47 (4) (1998) 741–871; K. Zumbrun, Refined wave-tracking and nonlinear stability of viscous Lax shocks, Methods Appl. Anal. 7 (2000) 747–768; M.-R. Raoofi, L 1 -asymptotic behavior of perturbed viscous shock profiles, thesis, Indiana Univ., 2004; C. Mascia, K. Zumbrun, Pointwise Green's function bounds and stability of relaxation shocks, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 51 (4) (2002) 773–904; C. Mascia, K. Zumbrun, Stability of small-amplitude shock profiles of symmetric hyperbolic–parabolic systems, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 57 (7) (2004) 841–876; C. Mascia, K. Zumbrun, Pointwise Green's function bounds for shock profiles with degenerate viscosity, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 169 (3) (2003) 177–263; C. Mascia, K. Zumbrun, Stability of large-amplitude shock profiles of hyperbolic–parabolic systems, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 172 (1) (2004) 93–131; C. Mascia, K. Zumbrun, Stability of large-amplitude shock profiles of general relaxation systems, SIAM J. Math. Anal., in press], and for special “weakly coupled” (respectively scalar diffusive–dispersive) undercompressive profiles in [T.P. Liu, K. Zumbrun, Nonlinear stability of an undercompressive shock for complex Burgers equation, Comm. Math. Phys. 168 (1) (1995) 163–186; T.P. Liu, K. Zumbrun, On nonlinear stability of general undercompressive viscous shock waves, Comm. Math. Phys. 174 (2) (1995) 319–345] (respectively [P. Howard, K. Zumbrun, Pointwise estimates for dispersive–diffusive shock waves, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 155 (2000) 85–169]). In particular, together with spectral results of [K. Zumbrun, Dynamical stability of phase transitions in the p-system with viscosity–capillarity, SIAM J. Appl. Math. 60 (2000) 1913–1924], our results yield nonlinear stability of large-amplitude undercompressive phase-transitional profiles near equilibrium of Slemrod's model [M. Slemrod, Admissibility criteria for propagating phase boundaries in a van der Waals fluid, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 81 (4) (1983) 301–315] for van der Waal gas dynamics or elasticity with viscosity–capillarity.