The solvability for a nonlinear degenerate hyperbolic–parabolic coupled system arising from nematic liquid crystals

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the Cauchy problem for a one-dimensional quasilinear hyperbolic–parabolic coupled system with initial data given on a line of parabolicity. The coupled system is derived from the Poiseuille flow of full Ericksen–Leslie model in the theory of nematic liquid crystals, which incorporates the crystal and liquid properties of the materials. The main difficulty comes from the degeneracy of the hyperbolic equation, which makes that the system is not continuously differentiable and then the classical methods for the strictly hyperbolic–parabolic coupled systems are invalid. With a choice of a suitable space for the unknown variable of the parabolic equation, we first solve the degenerate hyperbolic problem in a partial hodograph plane and express the smooth solution in terms of the original variables. Based on the smooth solution of the hyperbolic equation, we then construct an iterative sequence for the unknown variable of the parabolic equation by the fundamental solution of the heat equation. Finally, we verify the uniform convergence of the iterative sequence in the selected function space and establish the local existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the degenerate coupled problem.