Stability of the planar rarefaction wave to three-dimensional full compressible Navier-Stokes-Poisson system

A full compressible Navier-Stokes-Poisson system models the motion of viscous ions under the effect of variable temperature and plays important roles in the study of self-gravitational viscous gaseous stars and in simulations of charged particles in semiconductor devices and plasmas physics. We establish the time-asymptotic nonlinear stability of a planar rarefaction wave to the initial value problem of a three-dimensional full compressible Navier-Stokes-Poisson equation when the initial data are a small perturbation of the planar rarefaction wave. The proof is given by a delicate energy method, which involves highly non-trivial a priori bounds due to the effect of the self-consistent electric field. This appears as the first result on the nonlinear stability of wave patterns to the full compressible Navier-Stokes-Poisson system in multi-dimensions.