$\mathcal{A}$-free rigidity and applications to the compressible Euler system

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that not all measure-valued solutions to the compressible Euler equations can be approximated by weak solutions, highlighting a fundamental difference from the incompressible case and extending rigidity results.

Contribution

It constructs explicit measure-valued solutions that cannot be approximated by weak solutions and generalizes a rigidity theorem to the compressible Euler context.

Findings

Existence of measure-valued solutions not approximable by weak solutions.

Extension of rigidity results to the compressible Euler system.

Contrast with the incompressible case where approximation always holds.

Abstract

Can every measure-valued solution to the compressible Euler equations be approximated by a sequence of weak solutions? We prove that the answer is negative: Generalizing a well-known rigidity result of Ball and James to a more general situation, we construct an explicit measure-valued solution for the compressible Euler equations which can not be generated by a sequence of distributional solutions. We also give an abstract necessary condition for measure-valued solutions to be generated by weak solutions, relying on work of Fonseca and M\"uller. This difference between weak and measure-valued solutions in the compressible case is in contrast with the incompressible situation, where every measure-valued solution can be approximated by weak solutions, as shown by Sz\'ekelyhidi and Wiedemann.