This paper is concerned with the time-asymptotic behavior toward strong rarefaction waves of solutions to one-dimensional compressible Navier--Stokes equations. Assume that the corresponding Riemann problem to the compressible Euler equations can be solved by rarefaction waves (<i>V^R</i>, <i>U^R</i>, <i>S^R</i>)(<i>t</i>,<i>x</i>). If the initial data (<i>v</i>₀ , <i>u</i>₀ ,<i>s</i>₀ )(<i>x</i>) to the nonisentropic compressible Navier--Stokes equations is a small perturbation of an approximate rarefaction wave constructed as in [S. Kawashima, A. Matsumura, and K. Nishihara, <i>Proc. Japan Acad. Ser. A</i>, 62 (1986), pp. 249--252], then we show that, for the general gas, the Cauchy problem admits a unique global smooth solution (<i>v</i>, <i>u</i>, <i>s</i>)(<i>t</i>,<i>x</i>) which tends to (<i>V^R</i>, <i>U^R</i>, <i>S^R</i>)(<i>t</i>,<i>x</i>) as <i>t</i> tends to infinity. A global stability result can also be established for the nonisentropic ideal polytropic gas, provided that the adiabatic exponent is close to 1. Furthermore, we show that for the

The Boltzmann equation without Grads angular cutoff assumption is believed to have a regularizing effect on the solutions because of the non-integrable angular singularity of the cross-section. However, even though this has been justified satisfactorily for the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation, it is still basically unsolved for the spatially inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation. In this paper, by sharpening the coercivity and upper bound estimates for the collision operator, establishing the hypo-ellipticity of the Boltzmann operator based on a generalized version of the uncertainty principle, and analyzing the commutators between the collision operator and some weighted pseudo-differential operators, we prove the regularizing effect in all (time, space and velocity) variables on the solutions when some mild regularity is imposed on these solutions. For completeness, we also show that when the initial

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.

The contact discontinuity is one of the basic wave patterns in gas motions. The stability of contact discontinuities with general perturbations for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation is a long standing open problem. General perturbations of a contact discontinuity may generate diffusion waves which evolve and interact with the contact wave to cause analytic difficulties. In this paper, we succeed in obtaining the large time asymptotic stability of a contact wave pattern with a convergence rate for the NavierStokes equations and the Boltzmann equation in a uniform way. One of the key observations is that even though the energy norm of the deviation of the solution from the contact wave may grow at the rate (1+ t) 1 4, it can be compensated by the decay in the energy norm of the derivatives of the deviation which is of the order of (1+ t) 1 4. Thus, this reciprocal order of decay rates for the time

For the viscous and heat-conductive fluids governed by the compressible NavierStokes equations with an external potential force, there exist non-trivial stationary solutions with zero velocity. By combining the L^p - L^q estimates for the linearized equations and an elaborate energy method, the convergence rates are obtained in various norms for the solution to the stationary profile in the whole space when the initial perturbation of the stationary solution and the potential force are small in some Sobolev norms. More precisely, the optimal convergence rates of the solution and its first order derivatives in L²-norm are obtained when the L¹-norm of the perturbation is bounded.