Resolution of the ENO-TV conjecture: a parity dichotomy

Abstract

We resolve the ENO--TV conjecture, a discrete coercivity problem in compactness theory for entropy-stable approximations of hyperbolic conservation laws. For order-$k$ essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) reconstruction from compactly supported cell averages, it asks whether the nonnegative ENO source times the $(k-1)$st power of the amplitude uniformly controls the $(k+1)$st absolute-jump moment. We prove a parity dichotomy: the estimate holds for odd $k\ge3$ and fails for even $k\ge4$; the known second-order case completes the classification. Localization gives a selection-independent finite-difference functional uniformly comparable to the source and reduces the conjecture to discrete interpolation. For odd orders, summation by parts reveals a hidden square; a discrete Gagliardo--Nirenberg inequality yields coercivity. For even orders, Euler-polynomial blocks from the functional's polynomial kernel yield counterexamples that persist under arbitrarily small perturbations making all affected ENO comparisons strict. We also prove two coercive estimates for every $k\ge2$: control of jumps larger than a fixed fraction of the amplitude and of local blocks modulo sampled polynomials of degree at most $k-2$. Via the Cayley--Sylvester decomposition, we compute the dimensions of homogeneous first-cohomology spaces for the lattice shift on polynomial jump profiles. At fourth order, for a cubic flux and a globally strictly convex entropy, a total-degree-seven component of a reduced entropy-flux mismatch represents a nonzero class on profiles of degree at most two and hence has no translation-invariant finite-stencil $C^7$ local primitive at the zero constant state. Odd-order coercivity persists on globally quasi-uniform meshes, whereas for each $k\ge2$ it fails on a fixed irregular mesh even though every interface contribution remains nonnegative. This failure is due to the mesh geometry.