1. Introduction
This paper is devoted to studying the weak solution for compressible Euler equations, which is given by
with the initial data
here
and
is noted as the component
in the matrix. In addition,
is the density of the fluid,
stands for velocity vector field, and
denotes the scalar pressure. We define
on the set
. For simplicity, we consider the compressible Euler equations on the periodic domain
,
or 3, and denote the time interval
by
.
If we let
, then system (
1) becomes the classical noncompressible Euler equations, i.e.,
For the domain
, the weak solutions considered by Onsager [
1] to Equation (
3) satisfy the Hölder condition
for any
, where constant
C independent of
. In 1949, he conjectured that
- (i)
If , the energy of every weak solution must be conserved;
- (ii)
If , the energy of weak solutions will be dissipated.
For part (i) of the conjecture, in 1994, Constantin et al. [
2] gave the first complete proof that energy is conserved as
by considering the weak solutions of Equation (
3) in 3D. Subsequently, the weaker assumptions of the velocity
in Besov spaces also lead to the conservation of energy; see [
3,
4]. A significant result of Conjecture (ii) came from a series of breakthrough articles by De Lellis and Székelyhidi [
5,
6], where they show that the energy will be dissipative for the solutions in
if
. Later, De Lellis et al. [
7] showed that the energy of every weak solution is dissipated if the solutions belong to
, and in 2018, this result was improved to
by Isett in article [
8]. Other forms of weak solutions violate the energy conservation, such as dissipative solutions to Equation (
3) in 2D obtained by Choffrut [
9], the uniqueness for weak solutions of the noncompressible porous media equations studied by Cordoba et al. [
10], the uniqueness of weak solutions for Equation (
3) due to De Lellis and Székelyhidi [
11], and nonuniqueness of weak solutions for Equation (
3) achieved by Isett [
12].
In this work, we investigate the energy conservation of weak solutions for Equation (
1). Unlike the way the homogeneous Euler equations were dealt with in [
13,
14], where the temporal derivative of
can be completely transferred to a test function, the nonhomogeneous flows contain a nonlinear term
that needs to be estimated by the time commutator. To avoid the time commutator estimate, Leslie and Shvydkoy [
15] chose the test function
instead of
to multiply the momentum equation to obtain energy conservation, where convolution only works in space. However, the disadvantage is that the vacuum needs to be excluded. Recently, Feireisl et al. [
16] took a direct method, Besov regularity both in space and time, which allows the authors to handle a vacuum state. If the solution satisfies
then they showed that the energy of weak solutions is conserved in the sense of distributions. Akramov et al., in article [
17], improved the assumption
to
,
by the inequality
However, this paper will investigate if the energy of weak solutions is conserved in a point-wise sense. In order to not add any assumptions about the pressure term
p itself, we use the pressure law
,
. Following the ideas in [
18], two types of results that ensure energy conservation are given by "trading" the regularity between variables
and
, which is the spirit of the article. The first type of result is that the density
has strong regularity and assumes that the velocity belongs to the Besov space. It is concluded that the energy can be conserved for system (
1) if the Hölder exponent of
is greater than
. The second result is that the velocity field
admits more regularity, which allows the existence of a less regular density
. The density
or the velocity
is given more regularity conditions to ensure energy conservation in a point-wise sense on
, whereas the results of [
16,
17] hold only in a distributional sense. Similar to the idea of the treatment of the nonlinear term
in [
16], we will smooth system (
1) in both time and space, which allows the existence of a vacuum in the system.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we give the definition of weak solutions, some important inequalities and the energy equality of a smooth solution. Lemmas 1 and 2 are two key commutator estimates that are used to vanish the error terms. The definition of weak continuity is presented by Lemma 3, which will be used to show the energy conservation of weak solutions held in a point-wise sense. In
Section 3, we state the main results of our article, and two classes of sufficient conditions are given to guarantee the energy conservation of weak solutions to Equation (
1).
Section 4 is devoted to elaborating on the conclusion of our paper.
3. Main Results
In this section, we provide two results that ensure the energy conservation of system (
1) by “trading” the regularity between the velocity and the density. The first type of result gives the density
strong regularity and assumes that the velocity belongs to the Besov space. It is concluded that the energy conservation of system (
1) if the Hölder exponent of
is greater than
. The second result is to give the velocity field
more regularity, which allows the existence of a less regular density
. The detailed results are presented as follows.
Theorem 1. Let be a solution of (1) in the distributional sense. Assume satisfywhere , , . Then the conservation of energy holds in the point-wise sense, i.e., for all , we have , where Remark 1. Applying the isentropic pressure law instead of the pressure p, we allow the existence of a vacuum state if .
Remark 2. The condition is to ensure and , , which is crucial to derive energy conservation in a point-wise sense (this can be checked in the proof of Theorem 1). We can omit in assumption (13) if energy conservation holds only in the distributional sense, which is different from the condition (4) in article [16]. In fact, is not included in Remark 3. Constantin et al. [2] mollified the system (3) only in space, thus the velocity field only needs Besov regularity in space (that is, ) to ensure that energy is conserved. However, here we convolve the system (1) in both time and space, then the condition is natural. Remark 4. Thanks to Besov embedding theorem, we observe that , . Thus, the assumption , which has been used in the inequality (28) can be removed. Remark 5. The significant difference between our result and those in [15,16,17] is that we can establish the conservation of energy in a point-wise sense on , whereas it is in the sense of distribution in [16,17], and we admit the existence of a vacuum state (if ), which is excluded in [15]. In addition, we can also remove the condition in [17]. The price to pay is that the density ϱ is given more regularity conditions to ensure energy conservation. Thus, there is no direct correlation between our result and theirs in [16,17]. Theorem 2. Let be a solution of (1) in the distributional sense. Assume satisfywhere . Then the energy conservation holds in the point-wise sense, i.e., for all . Remark 6. Compared with Theorem 1, we do not need to add any regularity condition on the density besides the assumption , and the vacuum state of the system can also be presented if .
Remark 7. Since this theorem requires more regularity assumptions for the velocity to compensate for the roughness of the density ϱ, we need to add the condition to guarantee and , . The main difference between our result and [16,17] is that, similar to the previous result, we have the ability to establish the conservation of energy in a point-wise sense up to the initial time. If energy is conserved only in the distributional sense, the assumption can be replaced by the weaker assumption . Remark 8. System (1) can become nonhomogeneous noncompressible Euler equations by adding . The energy conservation for the noncompressible Euler equations was investigated in [15,16,18]. Moreover, Chen and Yu [18] tell us that ifwhere , then the energy equality conserves in a point-wise sense on . Proof of Theorem 1. To prove Theorem 1, by mollifying the system (
1) both in space and time, we obtain
Let
be a test function, where
denotes the set of functions that are smooth and compactly supported on
. To obtain the energy equality, Equation (
15) is multiplied by the test function
and integrated in time-space, and we have
Next, we will deal with each term in Equation (
17) by Equation (
16) and the appropriate commutators. The first term in (
17) can be written by
The second term of Equation (
17) can be calculated as
From Lemma 4, without loss of generality, we can deduce
by setting
in Equation (
11). By the isentropic pressure law
, the pressure term in (
17) can be treated as
Using the mass equation and the periodicity of the domain
, we deduce that
Thus, combining (
18–
20), Equation (
17) can be reduced as follows
To ensure that the energy equality is conserved in the distributional sense, our following work will show that
of (
21) as
tends to zero.
Utilizing Lemma 1 and the Hölder inequality,
can be estimated as follows
where
and
. Moreover,
as
.
In order to estimate
, we will divide
into two parts and utilize the following commutator
where
g and
h are real functions. Similar to the method used by Constantin et al. in [
2], we define
where
Then, one can easily check the following equality holds
We observe that
can be handled as
In view of (
22), we will divide
into two parts and estimate them separately, that is,
Applying equality (
23) to
, it follows that
as
for any
, where we have used
which is guaranteed by article [
2].
can be estimated by Lemma 1 as follows
and
as
for any
,
. Similarly,
and
as
for any
,
.
Therefore, combining (
24), (
25) and (
26), as
tends to zero for any
, one shows that
. The term
can be computed as
where
is a open ball with radius
. Since
is dense in
for any
, we have
and
which means that
as
, provided that
.
The term
can be treated as
Note that the point-wise identity (
23), replacing
g and
h with
and
, we have
Utlizing the property of convolution, we know that
and
tends to zero as
, provided that
. Moreover, owning to the density of
in
for any
,
can be estimated as
and
as
for any
.
On the other hand,
and
as
tends to zero.
Therefore, letting
, from (
13) and (
21) we can obtain
here
. From the previous assumptions, we can know that
is established in a distributional sense.
Next, we will prove the energy is conserved in a point-wise sense up to the initial time. For this, the test function
needs to be extended to
, where
is fixed and
. Using
, the energy equality can be written as
Thus, we only need to show the continuity of
and
in the strong topology as
t tends to
. For any fixed
, one obtains that
is bounded due to (
13). By Lemma 3, thus, we have
In addition, utilize the convexty of
, one has
On the other hand, we see
From inequality (
30) and
for all
, it yields that
In order to show the continuity of
in the strong topology as
t tends to
, we will consider the continuity of
and
as
t goes to
. Applying the momentum equation of (
1), one obtains
which is bounded due to (
13). Thus, we have
Moreover, by virtue of (
13) and (
31), it is given by
. Similarly,
is bounded due to (
13). Thus,
From (
13) and (
32), we know that
. Thus, we deduce
Similarly, we have the right temporal continuity of
in
, that is,
Moreover, by virtue of (
33) and inequality
for all
, we obtain
Therefore, combining (
29), (
30) and (
34), we obtain that
Finally, we choose positive
and
for any
such that
and define a time cut-off function
Utilizing
instead of
in Equation (
27), we can obtain
Letting
, according to (
33) and (
35), it follows that
Furthermore, sending
, it can be deduced that
for all
. This completes the proof of Theorem 1. □
Proof of Theorem 2. Following the method of the previous section, one has
where the pressure term is calculated as follows
Applying the mass equation and the periodicity of
, we can obtain
This equality implies that
In the same method as the previous Theorem 1, we need to show as goes to zero.
We handle the term
as
The first term of the above equality can be calculated as
Thanks to Lemma 2,
can be estimated as
as
for any
. We estimate
by (
7) and Hölder’s inequality, then
as
. On the other hand, according to (
5), (
6) and Lemma 2, we can obtain
as
tends to zero for any
. Thus,
as
for any
.
The calculation of
is as follows
From the Assumption (
14) and Lemma 2, we have
and
as
tends to zero for any
.
To estimate
, we divide it into two parts
Using the same method estimating
, we obtain
Thus, , as tends to zero.
Finally, similar to the proof of Theorem 1, we show that energy is conserved in the point-wise sense on . The main difference is that Theorem 2 reduces the regularity of the density by enhancing the regularity of the velocity profile. For this, the following terms need to be estimated again.
From the mass equation of (
1), we know that
is bounded due to (
14). Thus, one obtains
Similarly,
thanks to (
14), it is bounded. Therefore,
By Assumption (
14), one can easily check that
. This completes the proof of Theorem 2. □