Damping of Relativistic Shocks

We report the computer-generated damping rates of shocked acoustic pulses in a perfect fluid for the entire range of velocity discontinuity $0<~\Delta v<~c$. We obtain the significant result that the damping rate, instead of increasing monotonically with $\Delta v$, decreases asymptotically and vanishes as $\Delta v\to c$. Hence the conventional weak-shock decay law fails completely in the limit of strong relativistic shocks.