Stability of multi-dimensional viscous shocks for symmetric systems with variable multiplicities

Abstract

We establish long-time stability of multi-dimensional viscous shocks of a general class of symmetric hyperbolic--parabolic systems with variable multiplicities, notably including the equations of compressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in dimensions $d\ge 2$. This extends the existing result established by K. Zumbrun for systems with characteristics of constant multiplicity to the ones with variable multiplicity, yielding the first such a stability result for (fast) MHD shocks. At the same time, we are able to drop a technical assumption on structure of the so--called glancing set that was necessarily used in previous analyses. The key idea to the improvements is to introduce a new simple argument for obtaining a $L^1\to L^p$ resolvent bound in low--frequency regimes by employing the recent construction of degenerate Kreiss' symmetrizers by O. Gu\`es, G. M\'etivier, M. Williams, and K. Zumbrun. Thus, at the low-frequency resolvent bound level, our analysis gives an alternative to the earlier pointwise Green's function approach of K. Zumbrun. High--frequency solution operator bounds have been previously established entirely by nonlinear energy estimates.