Narrow Results

We derive a quadratically nonlinear equation that describes the motion of a tangential discontinuity in incompressible magnetohydrodynamics near the onset of a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. We show that nonlinear effects enhance the instability and give a criterion for it to occur in terms of a longitudinal strain of the fluid motion along the discontinuity.

We prove shock formation results for the compressible Euler equations and related systems of conservation laws in one space dimension, or three dimensions with spherical symmetry. We establish an L^∞ bound for C¹ solutions of the one-dimensional (1D) Euler equations, and use this to improve recent shock formation results of the authors. We prove analogous shock formation results for 1D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with orthogonal magnetic field, and for compressible flow in a variable area duct, which has as a special case spherically symmetric three-dimensional (3D) flow on the exterior of a ball.