Past exam of the differential equations 1 course of the University of Oxford 2021 1 b iv Solution 2026-10-25
For , . On the two sides of the corner-carrying characteristic curve, the partial derivative isAt every point with , the two one-sided partial derivatives are and . Therefore does not exist on this curve; its piecewise values have a jump discontinuity of magnitude . There are no other interior discontinuities. The values on the outer boundaries are interpreted from within .
This is exactly propagation of a derivative jump along a characteristic. Already on , the data have slopes and on the two sides of . The transport equation transports this corner along the characteristic curve from , which is ; it provides no smoothing. This is consistent with Noncharacteristic Cauchy data and does not contradict the smooth-data theorem, whose differentiability hypothesis fails here.