Global stability of rarefaction waves for a viscous radiative and reactive gas with temperature-dependent viscosity

We study the nonlinear stability of rarefaction waves to the Cauchy problem of a one-dimensional viscous radiative and reactive gas when the viscosity and heat conductivity coefficients depend on both density and absolute temperature. Our main idea is to use the smallness of the strength of the rarefaction waves to control the possible growth of its solutions induced by the nonlinearity of the system and the interactions of rarefaction waves from different families. The proof is based on some detailed analysis on uniform positive lower and upper bounds of the specific volume and the absolute temperature. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.