Existence of traveling waves in compressible Euler equations with viscosity and capillarity

Abstract

Given any Lax shock of the compressible Euler dynamics equations, we show that there exists the corresponding traveling wave of the system when viscosity and capillarity are suitably added. For a traveling wave corresponding to a given Lax shock, the governing viscous–capillary system is reduced to a system of two differential equations of first-order, which admits an asymptotically stable equilibrium point and a saddle point. We then develop the method of estimating attraction domain of the asymptotically stable equilibrium point for the compressible Euler equations and show that the saddle point in fact lies on the boundary of this set. Then, we establish a saddle-to-stable connection by pointing out that there is a stable trajectory leaving the saddle point and entering the attraction domain of the asymptotically stable equilibrium point. This gives us a traveling wave of the viscous–capillary compressible Euler equations.