Origin of hysteresis in shock wave reflection

We report the mechanism of the hysteresis in the transition between Regular and Mach reflections. A new discovery is that, the hysteresis loop is in fact the projection of a higher dimensional path, i.e. the valley lines in the surface of dissipation, of which minimal values correspond to stable reflection configurations. Since the saddle-nodes bifurcate the valleies of the surface, they are actually the transition points of the two reflections. Furthermore, the predicted reflection configurations agree well with the experimental and numerical results, which is a validation of this theory.