Inviscid Burgers equation Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
The inviscid Burgers equation is the scalar conservation law
Its discontinuities obey the Rankine-Hugoniot condition . Restricting to entropy solutions restores uniqueness for bounded initial data.
Write the Inviscid Burgers equation in conservation form as
A bounded function is a weak solution with initial datum when
for every compactly supported test function .
Across a straight discontinuity , integration by parts on its two sides shows that the boundary terms cancel exactly when the Rankine-Hugoniot condition holds:
when . For every , define
The three jumps have left and right states , , and , so their Rankine-Hugoniot speeds are respectively , , and , exactly the speeds of the displayed lines. Hence each satisfies the weak equation away from the origin and across every jump. Moreover, its nonzero support at time has length , so in as ; its initial datum is therefore zero in the weak identity.
The zero function and all the distinct functions are bounded weak solutions with the same zero initial datum. Thus weak solutions are not unique. The central jump from to is an expansion shock, which an entropy condition would exclude.
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.