In this paper, we investigate the initial-boundary value problem to the heat conductive compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Local existence and uniqueness of strong solutions is established with any such initial data that the initial density $\rho_0$, velocity $u_0$, and temperature $\theta_0$ satisfy $\rho_0\in W^{1,q}$, with $q\in(3,6)$, $u_0\in H^1$, and $\sqrt{\rho_0}\theta_0\in L^2$. The initial density is assumed to be only nonnegative and thus the initial vacuum is allowed. In addition to the necessary regularity assumptions, we do not require any initial compatibility conditions such as those proposed in (Y. Cho and H. Kim, \emph{Existence results for viscous polytropic fluids with vacuum}, J. Differential Equations {\bf 228} (2006), no.~2, 377--411.), which although are widely used in many previous works but put some inconvenient constraints on the initial data. Due to the weaker regularities of the initial data and the absence of the initial compatibility conditions, leading to weaker regularities of the solutions compared with those in the previous works, the uniqueness of solutions obtained in the current paper does not follow from the arguments used in the existing literatures. Our proof of the uniqueness of solutions is based on the following new idea of two-stages argument: (i) showing that the difference of two solutions (or part of their components) with the same initial data is controlled by some power function of the time variable; (ii) carrying out some singular-in-time weighted energy differential inequalities fulfilling the structure of the Gr\"onwall inequality. The existence is established in the Euler coordinates, while the uniqueness is proved in the Lagrangian coordinates first and then transformed back to the Euler coordinates.

We investigate the nonlinear stability of the superposition of a viscous contact wave and two rarefaction waves for a one-dimensional (1D) bipolar Vlasov--Poisson--Boltzmann (VPB) system, which can be used to describe the transportation of charged particles under the additional electrostatic potential force. Based on a new micro-macro type of decomposition around the local Maxwellian related to the bipolar VPB system in the previous work [H.-L. Li, Y. Wang, T. Yang, and M.-Y. Zhong, <i>Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.</i>, 228 (2018), pp. 39--127], we prove that the superposition of a viscous contact wave and two rarefaction waves is time-asymptotically stable to the 1D bipolar VPB system under some smallness conditions on the initial perturbations and wave strength, which implies that this typical superposition wave pattern is nonlinearly stable under the combined effects of the binary collisions, the electrostatic potential

In this paper, we first show that the regular solutions of compressible Euler equations in<i>R</i>³with damping will not be global if the initial density function has compact support. This implies that<i>c</i>²cannot be smooth across the boundary<i></i>separating the gas and the vacuum after a finite time, where<i>c</i>is the speed of sound. Then we study the local existence of solutions for isentropic gas flow in<i>R</i>when<i>c</i>, 0&lt;<i></i>1, is smooth across<i></i>, using the energy method and the characteristics method.

We propose a conservation-dissipation formalism (CDF) for coarse-grained descriptions of irreversible processes. This formalism is based on a stability criterion for non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The criterion ensures that non-equilibrium states tend to equilibrium in long time. As a systematic methodology, CDF provides a feasible procedure in choosing non-equilibrium state variables and determining their evolution equations. The equations derived in CDF have a unified elegant form. They are globally hyperbolic, allow a convenient definition of weak solutions, and are amenable to existing numerics. More importantly, CDF is a genuinely nonlinear formalism and works for systems far away from equilibrium. With this formalism, we formulate novel thermodynamics theories for heat conduction in rigid bodies and non-isothermal compressible Maxwell fluid flows as two typical examples. In these examples, the non-equilibrium variables are exactly the conjugate variables of the heat fluxes or stress tensors. The new theory generalizes Cattaneo’s law or Maxwell’s law in a regularized and nonlinear fashion.

The time evolution of the distribution function for the charged particles in a dilute gas is governed by the VlasovPoissonBoltzmann system when the force is self-induced and its potential function satisfies the Poisson equation. In this paper, we give a satisfactory global existence theory of classical solutions to this system when the initial data is a small perturbation of a global Maxwellian. Moreover, the convergence rate in time to the global Maxwellian is also obtained through the energy method. The proof is based on the theory of compressible NavierStokes equations with forcing and the decomposition of the solutions to the Boltzmann equation with respect to the local Maxwellian introduced in [23] and elaborated in [31].