Pointwise Green's Function Estimates Toward Stability for Degenerate Viscous Shock Waves

ABSTRACT

We consider degenerate viscous shock waves arising in systems of two conservation laws, where degeneracy describes viscous shock waves for which the asymptotic endstates are sonic to the hyperbolic system (the shock speed is equal to one of the characteristic speeds). In particular, we develop detailed pointwise estimates on the Green's function associated with the linearized perturbation equation, sufficient for establishing that spectral stability implies nonlinear stability. The analysis of degenerate viscous shock waves involves several new features, such as algebraic (nonintegrable) convection coefficients, loss of analyticity of the Evans function at the leading eigenvalue, and asymptotic time decay of perturbations intermediate between that of the Lax case and that of the undercompressive case.