Asymptotic behavior toward viscous shocks for the outflow problem of barotropic Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract: We study the large-time asymptotic stability of viscous shock profile to the outflow problem of barotropic Navier-Stokes equations on a half line. We consider the case when the far-field state as a right-end state of 2-Hugoniot shock curve belongs to the subsonic region or transonic curve. We employ the method of $a$-contraction with shifts, to prove that if the strength of viscous shock wave is small and sufficiently away from the boundary, and if a initial perturbation is small, then the solution asymptotically converges to the viscous shock up to a dynamical shift. We also prove that the speed of time-dependent shift decays to zero as times goes to infinity, the shifted viscous shock still retains its original profile time-asymptotically. Since the outflow problem in the Lagrangian mass coordinate leads to a free boundary value problem due to the absence of a boundary condition for the fluid density, we consider the problem in the Eulerian coordinate instead. Although the $a$-contraction method is technically more complicated in the Eulerian coordinate than in the Lagrangian one, this provides a more favorable framework by avoiding the difficulty arising from a free boundary.