Local and Global Results on Three Dimensional Rarefaction Waves in Spherical Symmetry

Abstract: We construct centered rarefaction wave solutions given background solutions to the compressible Euler equations. The flow considered in this article is the homentropic flow of perfect gas governed by compressible Euler equations and the gamma-law equation of state in 3-D spherical symmetry. We prove the existence of local in time rarefactions for general background solutions, which corresponds to one side of the solution to the Riemann problem in spherical symmetry. We also prove the existence of global in time rarefactions for background solutions that are close to constant states with reasonable decay.