Stability of a Composite Wave of Two Viscous Shock Waves for the Full Compressible Navier-Stokes Equation

In this paper we investigate the asymptotic stability of a composite wave consisting of two viscous shock waves for the full compressible Navier-Stokes equation. By introducing a new linear diffusion wave special to this case, we successfully prove that if the strengths of the viscous shock waves are suitably small with same order and also the initial perturbations which are not necessarily of zero integral are suitably small, the unique global solution in time to the full compressible Navier-Stokes equation exists and asymptotically tends toward the corresponding composite wave whose shifts (in space) of two viscous shock waves are uniquely determined by the initial perturbations. We then apply the idea to study a half space problem for the full compressible Navier-Stokes equation and obtain a similar result. Research is supported in part by NSFC Grant No. 10471138, NSFC-NSAF Grant No. 10676037 and 973 project of China, Grant No. 2006CB805902, in part by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Invitation Fellowship for Research in Japan (Short-Term). Research is supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 19340037, Japan.