Entropy Production in General Balance Laws

Abstract

Given a general scalar balance law, i.e., in several space dimensions and with flux and source both space and time dependent, we focus on the functional properties of the entropy production. We apply this operator to entropy solutions, to distributional solutions or to merely L $\infty$ functions. Proving its analytical properties naturally leads to the projective tensor product of C 1 spaces and to further natural extensions to space and time dependent or complex valued ''entropies''. Besides various qualitative properties, this extended framework allows to obtain new quantitative formulae -also by means of Fourier transforms -that provide different representations of the entropy production. Remarkably, this operator also furnishes a faithful representation of any L $\infty$ function.