THE ELLIPTICITY PRINCIPLE FOR SELF-SIMILAR POTENTIAL FLOWS

We consider self-similar potential flow for compressible gas with polytropic pressure law. Self-similar solutions arise as large-time asymptotes of general solutions, and as exact solutions of many important special cases like Mach reflection, multidimensional Riemann problems, or flow around corners. Self-similar potential flow is a quasilinear second-order PDE of mixed type which is hyperbolic at infinity (if the velocity is globally bounded). The type in each point is determined by the local pseudo-Mach number L, with L < 1 (respectively, L > 1) corresponding to elliptic (respectively, hyperbolic) regions. We prove an ellipticity principle: the interior of a parabolic-elliptic region of a sufficiently smooth solution must be elliptic; in fact L must be bounded above away from 1 by a domain-dependent function. In particular there are no open parabolic regions. We also discuss the case of slip boundary conditions at straight solid walls.