The Propagation of a Plane Shock into a Quiet Atmosphere

Abstract

In this note the problem of determining the propagation of a plane shock moving through a polytropic gas into an undisturbed body of the gas, leaving a non-isentropic disturbance behind it, is reduced to the solution of the problem of Cauchy for a Monge-Ampére partial differential equation of special type. The application of this result to specific examples is being studied with a view to later publication.