This book is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in the mathematical physics and PDE.

Considers the Cauchy problem for a strictly hyperbolic $2\times 2$ system of conservation laws in one space dimension $u_t+ F(u)]_x=0, u(0, x)=\bar u(x), $ which is neither linearly degenerate nor genuinely non-linea

The Eighth International Conference on Hyperbolic Problems - Theory, Nu merics, Applications, was held in Magdeburg, Germany, from February 27 to March 3, 2000. It was attended by over 220 participants from many European countries as well as Brazil, Canada, China, Georgia, India, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, und the USA. There were 12 plenary lectures, 22 further invited talks, and around 150 con tributed talks in parallel sessions as well as posters. The speakers in the parallel sessions were invited to provide a poster in order to enhance the dissemination of information. Hyperbolic partial differential equations describe phenomena of material or wave transport in physics, biology and engineering, especially in the field of fluid mechanics. Despite considerable progress, the mathematical theory is still strug gling with fundamental open problems concerning systems of such equations in multiple space dimensions. For various applications the development of accurate and efficient numerical schemes for computation is of fundamental importance. Applications touched in these proceedings concern one-phase and multiphase fluid flow, phase transitions, shallow water dynamics, elasticity, extended ther modynamics, electromagnetism, classical and relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, cosmology. Contributions to the abstract theory of hyperbolic systems deal with viscous and relaxation approximations, front tracking and wellposedness, stability ofshock profiles and multi-shock patterns, traveling fronts for transport equations. Numerically oriented articles study finite difference, finite volume, and finite ele ment schemes, adaptive, multiresolution, and artificial dissipation methods.

These notes developed from a course on the numerical solution of conservation laws first taught at the University of Washington in the fall of 1988 and then at ETH during the following spring. The overall emphasis is on studying the mathematical tools that are essential in de veloping, analyzing, and successfully using numerical methods for nonlinear systems of conservation laws, particularly for problems involving shock waves. A reasonable un derstanding of the mathematical structure of these equations and their solutions is first required, and Part I of these notes deals with this theory. Part II deals more directly with numerical methods, again with the emphasis on general tools that are of broad use. I have stressed the underlying ideas used in various classes of methods rather than present ing the most sophisticated methods in great detail. My aim was to provide a sufficient background that students could then approach the current research literature with the necessary tools and understanding. vVithout the wonders of TeX and LaTeX, these notes would never have been put together. The professional-looking results perhaps obscure the fact that these are indeed lecture notes. Some sections have been reworked several times by now, but others are still preliminary. I can only hope that the errors are not too blatant. Moreover, the breadth and depth of coverage was limited by the length of these courses, and some parts are rather sketchy.

Substantial effort has been drawn for years onto the development of (possibly high-order) numerical techniques for the scalar homogeneous conservation law, an equation which is strongly dissipative in L1 thanks to shock wave formation. Such a dissipation property is generally lost when considering hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, or simply inhomogeneous scalar balance laws involving accretive or space-dependent source terms, because of complex wave interactions. An overall weaker dissipation can reveal intrinsic numerical weaknesses through specific nonlinear mechanisms: Hugoniot curves being deformed by local averaging steps in Godunov-type schemes, low-order errors propagating along expanding characteristics after having hit a discontinuity, exponential amplification of truncation errors in the presence of accretive source terms... This book aims at presenting rigorous derivations of different, sometimes called well-balanced, numerical schemes which succeed in reconciling high accuracy with a stronger robustness even in the aforementioned accretive contexts. It is divided into two parts: one dealing with hyperbolic systems of balance laws, such as arising from quasi-one dimensional nozzle flow computations, multiphase WKB approximation of linear Schrödinger equations, or gravitational Navier-Stokes systems. Stability results for viscosity solutions of onedimensional balance laws are sketched. The other being entirely devoted to the treatment of weakly nonlinear kinetic equations in the discrete ordinate approximation, such as the ones of radiative transfer, chemotaxis dynamics, semiconductor conduction, spray dynamics or linearized Boltzmann models. “Caseology” is one of the main techniques used in these derivations. Lagrangian techniques for filtration equations are evoked too. Two-dimensional methods are studied in the context of non-degenerate semiconductor models.

This book provides a self-contained introduction to the mathematical theory of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, with particular emphasis on the study of discontinuous solutions, characterized by the appearance of shock waves. This area has experienced substantial progress in very recent years thanks to the introduction of new techniques, in particular the front tracking algorithm and the semigroup approach. These techniques provide a solution to the long standing open problems of uniqueness and stability of entropy weak solutions. This volume is the first to present a comprehensive account of these new, fundamental advances. It also includes a detailed analysis of the stability and convergence of the front tracking algorithm. A set of problems, with varying difficulty is given at the end of each chapter to verify and expand understanding of the concepts and techniques previously discussed. For researchers, this book will provide an indispensable reference to the state of the art in the field of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws.