Philippe G. LeFloch

This monograph provides a comprehensive study of the Riemann problem for systems of conservation laws arising in continuum physics. It presents the state-of-the-art on the dynamics of compressible fluids and mixtures that undergo phase changes, while remaining accessible to applied mathematicians and engineers interested in shock waves, phase boundary propagation, and nozzle flows. A large selection of nonlinear hyperbolic systems is treated here, including the Saint-Venant, van der Waals, and Baer-Nunziato models. A central theme is the role of the kinetic relation for the selection of under-compressible interfaces in complex fluid flows. This book is recommended to graduate students and researchers who seek new mathematical perspectives on shock waves and phase dynamics.

This monograph provides a comprehensive study of the Riemann problem for systems of conservation laws arising in continuum physics. It presents the state-of-the-art on the dynamics of compressible fluids and mixtures that undergo phase changes, while remaining accessible to applied mathematicians and engineers interested in shock waves, phase boundary propagation, and nozzle flows. A large selection of nonlinear hyperbolic systems is treated here, including the Saint-Venant, van der Waals, and Baer-Nunziato models. A central theme is the role of the kinetic relation for the selection of under-compressible interfaces in complex fluid flows. This book is recommended to graduate students and researchers who seek new mathematical perspectives on shock waves and phase dynamics.

This book is devoted to the Einstein's field equations of general relativity for self-gravitating massive scalar fields. We formulate the initial value problem when the initial data set is a perturbation of an asymptotically flat, spacelike hypersurface in Minkowski spacetime. We then establish the existence of an Einstein development associated with this initial data set, which is proven to be an asymptotically flat and future geodesically complete spacetime.

The “Hyperboloidal Foliation Method” introduced in this monograph is based on a (3 + 1) foliation of Minkowski spacetime by hyperboloidal hypersurfaces. This method allows the authors to establish global-in-time existence results for systems of nonlinear wave equations posed on a curved spacetime. It also allows to encompass the wave equation and the Klein-Gordon equation in a unified framework and, consequently, to establish a well-posedness theory for a broad class of systems of nonlinear wave-Klein-Gordon equations. This book requires certain natural (null) conditions on nonlinear interactions, which are much less restrictive that the ones assumed in the existing literature. This theory applies to systems arising in mathematical physics involving a massive scalar field, such as the Dirac-Klein-Gordon systems.

This set of lecture notes was written for a Nachdiplom-Vorlesungen course given at the Forschungsinstitut fUr Mathematik (FIM), ETH Zurich, during the Fall Semester 2000. I would like to thank the faculty of the Mathematics Department, and especially Rolf Jeltsch and Michael Struwe, for giving me such a great opportunity to deliver the lectures in a very stimulating environment. Part of this material was also taught earlier as an advanced graduate course at the Ecole Poly technique (Palaiseau) during the years 1995-99, at the Instituto Superior Tecnico (Lisbon) in the Spring 1998, and at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in the Fall 1998. This project started in the Summer 1995 when I gave a series of lectures at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Bangalore). One main objective in this course is to provide a self-contained presentation of the well-posedness theory for nonlinear hyperbolic systems of first-order partial differential equations in divergence form, also called hyperbolic systems of con­ servation laws. Such equations arise in many areas of continuum physics when fundamental balance laws are formulated (for the mass, momentum, total energy . . . of a fluid or solid material) and small-scale mechanisms can be neglected (which are induced by viscosity, capillarity, heat conduction, Hall effect . . . ). Solutions to hyper­ bolic conservation laws exhibit singularities (shock waves), which appear in finite time even from smooth initial data.