Time-asymptotic stability of composite waves of viscous shock and rarefaction for barotropic Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

We prove the time-asymptotic stability of composite waves consisting of the superposition of a viscous shock and a rarefaction for the one-dimensional compressible barotropic Navier-Stokes equations. Our result solves a long-standing problem first mentioned in 1986 by Matsumura and Nishihara in [28]. The same authors introduced it officially as an open problem in 1992 in [29] and it was again described as very challenging open problem in 2018 in the survey paper [26]. The main difficulty is due to the incompatibility of the standard anti-derivative method, used to study the stability of viscous shocks, and the energy method used for the stability of rarefactions. Instead of the anti-derivative method, our proof uses the a-contraction with shifts theory recently developed by two of the authors. This method is energy based, and can seamlessly handle the superposition of waves of different kinds.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.