The steady Euler-Poisson system and accelerating flows with transonic $C^1$-transitions

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence of classical two-dimensional solutions to the steady Euler-Poisson system with smooth transonic transitions, including cases with nonzero vorticity, across sonic interfaces of codimension 1.

Contribution

It establishes the well-posedness of a boundary value problem for a mixed elliptic-hyperbolic system and extends the existence results to the full Euler-Poisson system with vorticity.

Findings

Existence of classical solutions with continuous transonic transitions.

Solutions are $C^1$ across sonic interfaces, not weak discontinuities.

Extension of results to the full Euler-Poisson system with vorticity.

Abstract

In this paper, we prove the existence of two-dimensional solutions to the steady Euler-Poisson system with continuous transonic transitions across sonic interfaces of codimension 1. First, we establish the well-posedness of a boundary value problem for a linear second order system that consists of an elliptic-hyperbolic mixed type equation with a degeneracy occurring on an interface of codimension 1, and an elliptic equation weakly coupled together. Then we apply the Schauder fixed point theorem to prove the existence of two-dimensional solutions to the potential flow model of the steady Euler-Poisson system with continuous transonic transitions across sonic interfaces. With the aid of Helmholtz decomposition, established in [6], we extend the existence result to the full Euler-Poisson system for the case of nonzero vorticity. Most importantly, the solutions constructed in this paper are classical solutions to Euler-Poisson system, thus their sonic interfaces are not weak discontinuities in the sense that all the flow variables are $C^1$ across the interfaces.