Magnetohydrodynamic regime of the born-infeld electromagnetism

Abstract

The Born-Infeld (BI) model is a nonlinear correction of Maxwell's equations. By adding the energy and Poynting vector as additional variables, it can be augmented as a 10$\times$10 system of hyperbolic conservation laws, called the augmented BI (ABI) equations. The author found that, through a quadratic change of the time variable, the ABI system gives a simple energy dissipation model that combines Darcy's law and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Using the concept of "relative entropy" (or "modulated energy"), borrowed from the theory of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, we introduce a notion of generalized solutions, that we call dissipative solutions. For given initial conditions, the set of generalized solutions is not empty, convex, and compact. Smooth solutions to the dissipative system are always unique in this setting.