Time-Asymptotic Behavior of Wave Propagation Around a Viscous Shock Profile

We study the nonlinear stability of shock waves for viscous conservation laws. Our approach is based on a new construction of a fundamental solution for a linearized system around a shock profile. We obtain, for the first time, the pointwise estimates of nonlinear wave interactions across a shock wave. Our results apply to all ranges of weak shock waves and small perturbations. In particular, our results reduce to the time-asymptotic behavior of constant state perturbation, uniformly as the strength of the shock wave tends to zero. The research of the first author was partially supported by NSC Grant 96-2628-M-001-011 and NSF Grant DMS-0709248. The research of the second author was partially supported by NSF Grant DMS-0207154 and UAB Advance Program, sponsored by NSF.