Pointwise estimates and stability for dispersive-diffusive shock waves

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We study the stability and pointwise behavior of perturbed viscous shock waves for a general scalar conservation law with constant diffusion and dispersion. Along with the usual Lax shocks, such equations are known to admit undercompressive shocks. We unify the treatment of these two cases by introducing a new wave-tracking method based on ``instantaneous projection," giving improved estimates even in the Lax case. Another important feature connected with the introduction of dispersion is the treatment of a non-sectorial operator. An immediate consequence of our pointwise estimates is a simple spectral criterion for stability in all L^p norms, p >= 1 for the Lax case and p > 1 for the undercompressive case. Our approach extends immediately to the case of certain scalar equations of higher order, and would also appear suitable for systems.

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