On the Gelfand problem and viscosity matrices for two-dimensional hyperbolic systems of conservation laws

We present counter-intuitive examples of viscous regularizations of a two-dimensional strictly hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. The regularizations are obtained using two different viscosity matrices. While for both of the constructed “viscous” systems waves propagating in either $x$- or $y$-directions are stable, oblique waves may be linearly unstable. Numerical simulations fully corroborate these analytical results. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first nontrivial result related to the multidimensional Gelfand problem with non-symmetric fluxes and diffusion terms. Our conjectures provide direct answer to Gelfand's problem both in one- and multi-dimensional cases.