Critical Thresholds in Euler-Poisson Equations

By S. Engelberg, Hailiang Liu, Eitan Tadmor. 2001

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We present a preliminary study of a new phenom- ena associated with the Euler-Poisson equations — the so called critical threshold phenomena, where the answer to questions of global smoothness vs. finite time breakdown depends on whether the initial configuration crosses an intrinsic,ON1O critical thresh- old. We investigate a class of Euler-Poisson equations, ranging from one-dimensional problems with or without various forcing mech- anisms to multi-dimensional isotropic models with geometrical symmetry. These models are shown to admit a critical thresh- old which is reminiscent of the conditional breakdown of waves on the beach; only waves above certain initial critical threshold experience finite-time breakdown, but otherwise they propagate smoothly. At the same time, the asymptotic long time behavior of the solutions remains the same, independent of crossing these initial thresholds. A case in point is the simple one-dimensional problem where the unforced inviscid Burgers' solution always forms a shock dis- continuity, except for the non-generic case of increasing initial profile,u 0 0. In contrast, we show that the corresponding one- dimensional Euler-Poisson equation with zero background has global smooth solutions as long as its initialN0;u 0O-configuration satisfiesu 0 p 2k0 - see (2.11) below, allowing a finite, crit- ical negative velocity gradient. As is typical for such nonlinear convection problems, one is led to a Ricatti equation which is balanced here by a forcing acting as a 'nonlinear resonance', and which in turn is responsible for this critical threshold phenom- ena.

Subfields: Applied Mathematics, Computational Mechanics

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