In this paper, we consider the Cauchy problem to the heat conductive compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the presence of vacuum and with vacuum far field. Global well-posedness of strong solutions is established under the assumption, among some other regularity and compatibility conditions, that the scaling invariant quantity $\|\rho_0\|_\infty(\|\rho_0\|_3+\|\rho_0\|_\infty^2\|\sqrt{\rho_0}u_0\|_2^2)(\|\nabla u_0\|_2^2+ \|\rho_0\|_\infty\|\sqrt{\rho_0}E_0\|_2^2)$ is sufficiently small, with the smallness depending only on the parameters $R, \gamma, \mu, \lambda,$ and $\kappa$ in the system. Notably, the smallness assumption is imposed on the above scaling invariant quantity exclusively, and it is independent of any norms of the initial data, which is different from the existing papers, see, e.g., \cite{HLX12,HUANGLI11,WENZHU17}. The total mass can be either finite or infinite. A new equation for the density, more precisely for the cubic of the density, derived from combing the continuity and momentum equations, is employed to get the $L^\infty_t(L^3)$ type estimate of the density.

It is well known that the Boltzmann equation is related to the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in the field of gas dynamics. The relation is either for small Knudsen number, or, for dissipative waves in the time-asymptotic sense. In this paper, we show that rarefaction waves for the Boltzmann equation are time-asymptotic stable and tend to the rarefaction waves for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. Our main tool is the combination of techniques for viscous conservation laws and the energy method based on micro-macro decomposition of the Boltzmann equation. The expansion nature of the rarefaction waves and the suitable microscopic version of the <i>H</i>-theorem are essential elements of our analysis.

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.

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Nonlinear hyperbolic systems with relaxations may encounter different scales of relaxation time, which is a prototype multiscale phenomenon that arises in many applications. In such a problem the relaxation time is of O(1) in part of the domain and very small in the remaining domain in which the solution can be approximated by the zero relaxation limit which can be solved numerically much more efficiently. For the Jin–Xin relaxation system in such a two-scale setting, we establish its wellposedness and singular limit as the (smaller) relaxation time goes to zero. The limit is a multiscale coupling problem which couples the original Jin–Xin system on the domain when the relaxation time is O(1) with its relaxation limit in the other domain through interface conditions which can be derived by matched interface layer analysis.As a result, we also establish the well-posedness and regularity (such as boundedness in sup norm with bounded total variation and L 1-contraction) of the coupling problem, thus providing a rigorous mathematical foundation, in the general nonlinear setting, to the multiscale domain decomposition method for this two-scale problem originally proposed in Jin et al. in Math. Comp. 82, 749–779, 2013.