Relative Entropy and the Stability of Shocks and Contact Discontinuities for Systems of Conservation Laws with non-BV Perturbations

We develop a theory based on relative entropy to show the uniqueness and L ² stability (up to a translation) of extremal entropic Rankine?CHugoniot discontinuities for systems of conservation laws (typically 1-shocks, n-shocks, 1-contact discontinuities and n-contact discontinuities of large amplitude) among bounded entropic weak solutions having an additional trace property. The existence of a convex entropy is needed. No BV estimate is needed on the weak solutions considered. The theory holds without smallness conditions. The assumptions are quite general. For instance, strict hyperbolicity is not needed globally. For fluid mechanics, the theory handles solutions with vacuums.