Balanced flux formulations for multidimensional Evans function computations for viscous shocks

The Evans function is a powerful tool for the stability analysis of viscous shock profiles; zeros of this function carry stability information. In the one-dimensional case, it is typical to compute the Evans function using Goodman's integrated coordinates [G1]; this device facilitates the search for zeros of the Evans function by winding number arguments. Although integrated coordinates are not available in the multidimensional case, we show here that there is a choice of coordinates which gives similar advantages

Pointwise Green function bounds and stability of combustion waves

Generalizing similar results for viscous shock and relaxation waves, we establish sharp pointwise Green function bounds and linearized and nonlinear stability for traveling wave solutions of an abstract viscous combustion model including both Majda's model and the full reacting compressible Navier--Stokes equations with artificial viscosity with general multi-species reaction and reaction-dependent equation of state, % under the necessary conditions of strong spectral stability, i.e., stable point spectrum of the linearized operator about the wave, transversality of the profile as a connection in the traveling-wave ODE, and hyperbolic stability of the associated Chapman--Jouguet (square-wave) approximation. Notably, our results apply to combustion waves of any type: weak or strong, detonations or deflagrations, reducing the study of stability to verification of a readily numerically checkable Evans function condition. Together with spectral results of Lyng and Zumbrun, this gives immediately stability of small-amplitude strong detonations in the small heat-release (i.e., fluid-dynamical) limit, simplifying and greatly extending previous results obtained by energy methods by Liu--Ying and Tesei--Tan for Majda's model and the reactive Navier--Stokes equations, respectively