In this paper, we establish the local existence and uniqueness of multi-dimensional contact discontinuities for the ideal compressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in Sobolev spaces, which are most typical interfacial waves for astrophysical plasmas and prototypical fundamental waves for hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. Such waves are characteristic discontinuities for which there is no flow across the discontinuity surface while the magnetic field crosses transversely, which lead to a two-phase free boundary problem where the pressure, velocity and magnetic field are continuous across the interface whereas the entropy and density may have jumps. To overcome the difficulties of possible nonlinear Rayleigh--Taylor instability and loss of derivatives, here we use crucially the Lagrangian formulation and the Cauchy formula (1882) for the magnetic field. This enables us to capture the boundary regularizing effect of the transversal magnetic field on the flow map, and on the other hand, it allows us to define a special good unknown of the magnetic field to get around the troublesome boundary integrals due to the transversality of the magnetic field. In particular, our result removes the additional assumption of the Rayleigh--Taylor sign condition required by Morando, Tarkhinin and Trebeschi (\emph{J. Differential Equations} \textbf{258} (2015), no. 7, 2531--2571; \emph{Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.} \textbf{228} (2018), no. 2, 697--742) and holds for both 2D and 3D and hence gives a complete answer to the two open questions raised therein. Moreover, there is {\it no loss of derivatives} in our well-posedness theory. The solution is constructed as {\it the inviscid limit} of solutions to well-chosen nonlinear approximate problems for the two-phase compressible viscous non-resistive MHD.

In this article, we re-examine some of the classical pointwise multiplication theorems in Sobolev–Slobodeckij spaces, in part motivated by a simple counter-example that illustrates how certain multiplication theorems fail in Sobolev–Slobodeckij spaces when a bounded domain is replaced by R^n. We identify the source of the failure, and examine why the same failure is not encountered in Bessel potential spaces. To analyze the situation, we begin with a survey of the classical multiplication results stated and proved in the 1977 article of Zolesio, and carefully distinguish between the case of spaces defined on the all of R^n and spaces defined on a bounded domain (with e.g. a Lipschitz boundary). However, the survey we give has a few new wrinkles; the proofs we include are based almost exclusively on interpolation theory rather than Littlewood–Paley theory and Besov spaces, and some of the results we give and their proofs, including the results for negative exponents, do not appear in the literature in this form. We also include a particularly important variation of one of the multiplication theorems that is relevant to the study of nonlinear PDE systems arising in general relativity and other areas. The conditions for multiplication to be continuous in the case of Sobolev–Slobodeckij spaces are somewhat subtle and intertwined, and as a result, the multiplication theorems of Zolesio in 1977 have been cited (more than once) in the standard literature in slightly more generality than what is actually proved by Zolesio, and in cases that allow for construction of counter-examples such as the one included here.

It is a classical result of Sobolev spaces that any $H^1$ function has a well-defined $H^{1/2}$ trace on the boundary of a sufficient regular domain. In this work, we present stronger and more general versions of such a trace theorem in a new nonlocal function space $\cS(\Omega)$ satisfying $H^1(\Omega)\subset \cS(\Omega)\subset L^2(\Omega)$. The new space $\cS(\Omega)$ is associated with a nonlocal norm characterized by a nonlocal interaction kernel that is defined heterogeneously with a special localization feature on the boundary. Through the heterogeneous localization, we are able to show that the $H^{1/2}$ norm of the trace on the boundary can be controlled by the nonlocal norm that are weaker than the classical $H^1$ norm. In fact, the trace theorems can be essentially shown without imposing any extra regularity of the function in the interior of the domain other than being square integrable. Implications of the new trace theorems to the coupling of local and nonlocal equations and possible further generalizations are also discussed.