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arXiv · 1005.0369

Viscous shocks in Hele-Shaw flow and Stokes phenomena of the Painleve I transcendent

Seung-Yeop Lee·Razvan Teodorescu·Paul Wiegmann
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Abstract

In Hele-Shaw flows at vanishing surface tension, the boundary of a viscous fluid develops cusp-like singularities. In recent papers [1, 2] we have showed that singularities trigger viscous shocks propagating through the viscous fluid. Here we show that the weak solution of the Hele-Shaw problem describing viscous shocks is equivalent to a semiclassical approximation of a special real solution of the Painleve I equation. We argue that the Painleve I equation provides an integrable deformation of the Hele-Shaw problem which describes flow passing through singularities. In this interpretation shocks appear as Stokes level-lines of the Painleve linear problem.

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Seung-Yeop Lee, Razvan Teodorescu, Paul Wiegmann. 2010-05-03. Viscous shocks in Hele-Shaw flow and Stokes phenomena of the Painleve I transcendent. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physd.2010.09.017

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