Relative entropy and compressible potential flow

Abstract

Compressible (full) potential flow is expressed as an equivalent first-order system of conservation laws for density $\rho$ and velocity $v$. Energy $E$ is shown to be the only nontrivial entropy for that system in multiple space dimensions, and it is strictly convex in $\rho ,v$ if and only if $|v|<c$. For motivation some simple variations on the relative entropy theme of Dafermos/DiPerna are given, for example that smooth regions of weak entropy solutions shrink at finite speed, and that smooth solutions force solutions of singular entropy-compatible perturbations to converge to them. We conjecture that entropy weak solutions of compressible potential flow are unique, in contrast to the known counterexamples for the Euler equations.

References in corpus (1)

• On admissibility criteria for weak solutions of the Euler equations