Nonlinear stability of periodic traveling wave solutions of systems of viscous conservation laws in the generic case

Extending previous results of Oh–Zumbrun and Johnson–Zumbrun, we show that spectral stability implies linearized and nonlinear stability of spatially periodic traveling wave solutions of viscous systems of conservation laws for systems of generic type, removing a restrictive assumption that wave speed be constant to first order along the manifold of nearby periodic solutions. Key to our analysis is a nonlinear cancellation estimate observed by Johnson and Zumbrun, along with a detailed understanding of the Whitham averaged system. The latter motivates a careful analysis of the Bloch perturbation expansion near zero frequency and suggests factoring out an appropriate translational modulation of the underlying wave, allowing us to derive the sharpened low-frequency estimates needed to close the nonlinear iteration arguments.