ABSTRACT

We consider the free-boundary relativistic Euler equations in Minkowski spacetime equipped with a physical vacuum boundary, which models the motion of a relativistic gas. We concern ourselves with the family of isentropic, barotropic, and polytropic gas, with an equation of state p=\rho^{1+\kappa}, \kappa \in (0,2/3]. We construct an open class of initial data that launches future-global solutions. Such solutions are spherically symmetric, have small initial density, and expand asymptotically linearly in time. In particular, the asymptotic rate of expansion is allowed to be arbitrarily close to the speed of light. Therefore, our main result is far from a perturbation of existing results concerning the classical isentropic Euler counterparts. This is a joint work with Marcelo M. Disconzi (Vanderbilt) and Zhongtian Hu (Princeton).