Stability and Freezing of Nonlinear Waves in First Order Hyperbolic PDEs

It is a well-known problem to derive nonlinear stability of a traveling wave from the spectral stability of a linearization. In this paper we prove such a result for a large class of hyperbolic systems. To cope with the unknown asymptotic phase, the problem is reformulated as a partial differential algebraic equation for which asymptotic stability becomes usual Lyapunov stability. The stability proof is then based on linear estimates from (Rottmann-Matthes, J Dyn Diff Equat 23:365–393, 2011) and a careful analysis of the nonlinear terms. Moreover, we show that the freezing method (Beyn and Thümmler, SIAM J Appl Dyn Syst 3:85–116, 2004; Rowley et al. Nonlinearity 16:1257–1275, 2003) is well-suited for the long time simulation and numerical approximation of the asymptotic behavior. The theory is illustrated by numerical examples, including a hyperbolic version of the Hodgkin–Huxley equations.