Stability of Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Schemes for Wave Propagation when the Coefficient Matrices have Jumps

We use the behavior of the $$L_{2}$$ L 2 norm of the solutions of linear hyperbolic equations with discontinuous coefficient matrices as a surrogate to infer stability of discontinuous Galerkin spectral element methods (DGSEM). Although the $$L_{2}$$ L 2 norm is not bounded in terms of the initial data for homogeneous and dissipative boundary conditions for such systems, the $$L_{2}$$ L 2 norm is easier to work with than a norm that discounts growth due to the discontinuities. We show that the DGSEM with an upwind numerical flux that satisfies the Rankine–Hugoniot (or conservation) condition has the same energy bound as the partial differential equation does in the $$L_{2}$$ L 2 norm, plus an added dissipation that depends on how much the approximate solution fails to satisfy the Rankine–Hugoniot jump.