We investigate the linear stability of shears near the Couette flow for a class of 2D incompressible stably stratified fluids. Our main result consists of nearly optimal decay rates for perturbations of stationary states whose velocities are monotone shear flows $(U(y),0)$ and have an exponential density profile. In the case of the Couette flow $U(y)=y$, we recover the rates predicted by Hartman in 1975, by adopting an explicit point-wise approach in frequency space. As a by-product, this implies optimal decay rates as well as Lyapunov instability in $L^2$ for the vorticity. For the previously unexplored case of more general shear flows close to Couette, the inviscid damping results follow by a weighted energy estimate. Each outcome concerning the stably stratified regime applies to the Boussinesq equations as well. Remarkably, our results hold under the celebrated Miles-Howard criterion for stratified fluids.
Consider inviscid fluids in a channel {-1<y<1}. For the Couette flow v_0=(y,0), the vertical velocity of solutions to the linearized Euler equation at v_0 decays in time. At the nonlinear level, such inviscid damping has not been proved. First, we show that in any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood of Couette flow, there exist non-parallel steady flows with arbitrary minimal horizontal period. This implies that nonlinear inviscid damping is not true in any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood of Couette flow and for any horizontal period. Indeed, the long time behavior in such neighbor…
We study the inviscid damping of Couette flow with an exponentially stratified density. The optimal decay rates of the velocity field and the density are obtained for general perturbations with minimal regularity. For Boussinesq approximation model, the decay rates we get are consistent with the previous results in the literature. We also study the decay rates for the full Euler equations of stratified fluids, which were not studied before. For both models, the decay rates depend on the Richardson number in a very similar way. Besides, we also study the dispersive decay due to the exponential …
In this work we study the long time, inviscid limit of the 2D Navier-Stokes equations near the periodic Couette flow, and in particular, we confirm at the nonlinear level the qualitative behavior predicted by Kelvin's 1887 linear analysis. At high Reynolds number Re, we prove that the solution behaves qualitatively like 2D Euler for times t \lesssim Re^(1/3), and in particular exhibits inviscid damping (e.g. the vorticity weakly approaches a shear flow). For times t \gtrsim Re^(1/3), which is sooner than the natural dissipative time scale O(Re), the viscosity becomes dominant and the streamwis…
In this note we revisit the proof of Bedrossian and Masmoudi [arXiv:1306.5028] about the inviscid damping of planar shear flows in the 2D Euler equations under the assumption of zero mean perturbation. We prove that a small perturbation to the 2D Euler Couette flow in $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$ strongly converge to zero, under the additional assumption that the average in $x$ is always zero. In general the mean is not a conserved quantity for the nonlinear dynamics, for this reason this is a particular case. Nevertheless our assumption allow the presence of echoes in the problem, which we c…
We prove the existence of steady \emph{space quasi-periodic} stream functions, solutions for the Euler equation in vorticity-stream function formulation in the two dimensional channel ${\mathbb R}\times [-1,1]$. These solutions bifurcate from a prescribed shear equilibrium near the Couette flow, whose profile induces finitely many modes of oscillations in the horizontal direction for the linearized problem. Using a Nash-Moser implicit function iterative scheme, near such equilibrium we construct small amplitude, space reversible stream functions slightly deforming the linear solutions and reta…
We prove asymptotic stability of shear flows in a neighborhood of the Couette flow for the 2D Euler equations in the domain $\T\times[0,1]$. More precisely we prove that if we start with a small and smooth perturbation (in a suitable Gevrey space) of the Couette flow, then the velocity field converges strongly to a nearby shear flow. The vorticity, which is initially assumed to be supported in the interior of the channel, will remain supported in the interior of the channel, will be driven to higher frequencies by the linear flow, and will converge weakly to $0$ as $t\to\infty$, modulo the she…
We study the 2D Navier-Stokes equations linearized around the Couette flow $(y,0)^t$ in the periodic channel $\mathbb T \times [-1,1]$ with no-slip boundary conditions in the vanishing viscosity $ν\to 0$ limit. We split the vorticity evolution into the free evolution (without a boundary) and a boundary corrector that is exponentially localized to at most an $O(ν^{1/3})$ boundary layer. If the initial vorticity perturbation is supported away from the boundary, we show inviscid damping of both the velocity and the vorticity associated to the boundary layer. For example, our $L^2_t L^1_y$ estimat…
We investigate the long-time properties of the two-dimensional inviscid Boussinesq equations near a stably stratified Couette flow, for an initial Gevrey perturbation of size $\varepsilon$. Under the classical Miles-Howard stability condition on the Richardson number, we prove that the system experiences a shear-buoyancy instability: the density variation and velocity undergo an $O(t^{-1/2})$ inviscid damping while the vorticity and density gradient grow as $O(t^{1/2})$. The result holds at least until the natural, nonlinear timescale $t \approx \varepsilon^{-2}$. Notice that the density behav…
We prove asymptotic stability of shear flows close to the planar Couette flow in the 2D inviscid Euler equations on $\Torus \times \Real$. That is, given an initial perturbation of the Couette flow small in a suitable regularity class, specifically Gevrey space of class smaller than 2, the velocity converges strongly in L^2 to a shear flow which is also close to the Couette flow. The vorticity is asymptotically driven to small scales by a linear evolution and weakly converges as $t \rightarrow \pm\infty$. The strong convergence of the velocity field is sometimes referred to as inviscid damping…
We prove the asymptotic stability of shear flows close to the Couette flow for the 2-D inhomogeneous incompressible Euler equations on $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. More precisely, if the initial velocity is close to the Couette flow and the initial density is close to a positive constant in the Gevrey class 2, then 2-D inhomogeneous incompressible Euler equations are globally well-posed and the velocity converges strongly to a shear flow close to the Couette flow, and the vorticity will be driven to small scales by a linear evolution and weakly converges as $t\to \infty$. To our knowledge, t…
In this paper, we investigate linear stability properties of the 2D isentropic compressible Euler equations linearized around a shear flow given by a monotone profile, close to the Couette flow, with constant density, in the domain $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. We begin by directly investigating the Couette shear flow, where we characterize the linear growth of the compressible part of the fluid while proving time decay for the incompressible part (inviscid damping with slower rates). Then we extend the analysis to monotone shear flows near Couette, where we are able to give an upper bound, s…
We prove linear inviscid damping near a general class of monotone shear flows in a finite channel, in Gevrey spaces. It is an essential step towards proving nonlinear inviscid damping for general shear flows that are not close to the Couette flow, which is a major open problem in 2d Euler equations.
This note is devoted to the linear stability of the Couette flow for the non-isentropic compressible Euler equations in a domain $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. Exploiting the several conservation laws originated from the special structure of the linear system, we obtain a Lyapunov type instability for the density, the temperature, the compressible part of the velocity field, and also obtain an inviscid damping for the incompressible part of the velocity field.
In this paper, we study the nonlinear asymptotic stability of the Couette flow in the stably stratified regime, namely the Richardson number $γ^2>\frac{1}{4}$. Precisely, we prove that if the initial perturbation $(u_{in},\vartheta_{in})$ of the Couette flow $v_s=(y,0)$ and the linear temperature $ρ_s=-γ^2y+1$ satisfies $\|u_{in}\|_{H^{s+1}}+\|\vartheta_{in}\|_{H^{s+2}}\leq ε_0ν^{\frac{1}{2}}$, then the asymptotic stability holds.
We prove the instability of the Couette flow if the disturbances is less smooth than the Gevrey space of class 2. This shows that this is the critical regularity for this problem since it was proved in [5] that stability and inviscid damping hold for disturbances which are smoother than the Gevrey space of class 2. A big novelty is that this critical space is due to an instability mechanism which is completely nonlinear and is due to some energy cascade.
We consider the 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbf{R}$, with initial vorticity that is $δ$ close in $H^{log}_xL^2_{y}$ to $-1$(the vorticity of the Couette flow $(y,0)$). We prove that if $δ\ll ν^{1/2}$, where $ν$ denotes the viscosity, then the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation approaches some shear flow which is also close to Couette flow for time $t\gg ν^{-1/3}$ by a mixing-enhanced dissipation effect and then converges back to Couette flow when $t\to +\infty$. In particular, we show the nonlinear enhanced dissipation and the inviscid damping results…
We are concerned with the linear stability of the Couette flow for the non-isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations with vanished shear viscosity in a domain $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. For a general initial data settled in Sobolev spaces, we obtain a Lyapunov type instability of the density, the temperature, the compressible part of the velocity field, and also obtain an inviscid damping for the incompressible part of the velocity field. Moreover, if the initial density, the initial temperature and the incompressible part of the initial velocity field satisfy some quality relation, …
We study small disturbances to the periodic, plane Couette flow in the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations at high Reynolds number $\textbf{Re}$. We prove that for sufficiently regular initial data of size $ε\leq c_0\textbf{Re}^{-1}$ for some universal $c_0 > 0$, the solution is global, remains within $O(c_0)$ of the Couette flow in $L^2$, and returns to the Couette flow as $t \rightarrow \infty$. For times $t \gtrsim \textbf{Re}^{1/3}$, the streamwise dependence is damped by a mixing-enhanced dissipation effect and the solution is rapidly attracted to the class of "2.5 dimensional" stre…
In this paper we reveal the existence of a large family of new, nontrivial and smooth traveling waves for the 2D Euler equation at an arbitrarily small distance from the Couette flow in $H^s$, with $s<3/2$, at the level of the vorticity. The speed of these waves is of order 1 with respect to this distance. This result strongly contrasts with the setting of very high regularity in Gevrey spaces (see arXiv:1306.5028), where the problem exhibits an inviscid damping mechanism that leads to relaxation of perturbations back to nearby shear flows. It also complements the fact that there not exist non…
In this paper, we study the linear stability properties of perturbations around the homogeneous Couette flow for a 2D isentropic compressible fluid in the domain $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. In the inviscid case there is a generic Lyapunov type instability for the density and the irrotational component of the velocity field. More precisely, we prove that their $L^2$ norm grows as $t^{1/2}$ and this confirms previous observations in the physics literature. Instead, the solenoidal component of the velocity field experience inviscid damping, meaning that it decays to zero even in the absence of…
In this paper, we study the transition threshold problem for the 2-D Navier-Stokes equations around the Couette flow $(y,0)$ at large Reynolds number $Re$ in a finite channel. We develop a systematic method to establish the resolvent estimates of the linearized operator and space-time estimates of the linearized Navier-Stokes equations. In particular, three kinds of important effects: enhanced dissipation, inviscid damping and boundary layer, are integrated into the space-time estimates in a sharp form. As an application, we prove that if the initial velocity $v_0$ satisfies $\|v_0-(y, 0)\|_{H…
We study the stability of the Couette flow $(y,0,0)^T$ in the 3D incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations for a conducting fluid on $\mathbb{T} \times \mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{T} $ in the presence of a homogeneous magnetic field $α(σ, 0, 1)$. We consider the inviscid, ideal conductor limit $\textbf{Re}^{-1}$, $\textbf{R}_m^{-1} \ll 1$ and prove that for strong and suitably oriented background fields the Couette flow is asymptotically stable to perturbations small in the Sobolev space $H^N$. More precisely, we show that if $α$ and $N$ are sufficiently large, $σ\in \mathbb{R} \setminu…
This article is concerned with the asymptotic behavior of the two-dimensional inviscid Boussinesq equations with a damping term in the velocity equation. Precisely, we provide the time-decay rates of the smooth solutions to that system. The key ingredient is a careful analysis of the Green kernel of the linearized problem in Fourier space, combined with bilinear estimates and interpolation inequalities for handling the nonlinearity.
The classical plane Couette flow, plane Poiseuille flow, and pipe Poiseuille flow share some universal 3D steady coherent structure in the form of "streak-roll-critical layer". As the Reynolds number approaches infinity, the steady coherent structure approaches a 3D limiting shear of the form ($U(y,z), 0, 0$) in velocity variables. All such 3D shears are steady states of the 3D Euler equations. This raises the importance of investigating the stability of such inviscid 3D shears in contrast to the classical Rayleigh theory of inviscid 2D shears. Several general criteria of stability for such in…
Linear Growth and Nonlinear Stability of Two-Dimensional MHD Couette Flow with Vertical Dissipation
School of Mathematics, South China University of Technology（华南理工大学数学学院）；Department of Mathematics, University of Notre Dame（圣母大学数学系）；School of Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Technology（广东工业大学数学与统计学院）
We study the asymptotic behavior of the forced linear Euler and nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations close to Couette flow in a periodic channel. As our main result we show that for smooth time-periodic forcing linear inviscid damping persists, i.e. the velocity field (weakly) asymptotically converges. However, stability and scattering to the transport problem fail in $H^{s}, s>-1$. We further show that this behavior is consistent with the nonlinear Euler equations and that a similar result also holds for the nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations. Hence, these results provide an indication that nonli…
In this paper, we study stationary structures near the planar Couette flow in Sobolev spaces on a channel $\mathbb{T}\times[-1,1]$, and asymptotic behavior of Couette flow in Gevrey spaces on $\mathbb{T}\times\mathbb{R}$ for the $β$-plane equation. Let $T>0$ be the horizontal period of the channel and $α={2π\over T}$ be the wave number. We obtain a sharp region $O$ in the whole $(α,β)$ half-plane such that non-parallel steadily traveling waves do not exist for $(α,β)\in O$ and such traveling waves exist for $(α,β)$ in the remaining regions, near Couette flow for $H^{\geq5}$ velocity perturbati…
In this article we establish linear inviscid damping with optimal decay rates around 2D Taylor-Couette flow and similar monotone flows in an annular domain $B_{r_{2}}(0) \setminus B_{r_{1}}(0) \subset \mathbb{R}^{2}$. Following recent results by Wei, Zhang and Zhao, we establish stability in weighted norms, which allow for a singularity formation at the boundary, and additional provide a description of the blow-up behavior.
Sommerfeld paradox (turbulence paradox) roughly says that mathematically the Couette linear shear flow is linearly stable for all values of the Reynolds number, but experimentally transition from the linear shear to turbulence occurs under perturbations of any size when the Reynolds number is large enough. In [Li, Lin 2011], we offered a resolution of this paradox. The aim of this paper is to provide a numerical implementation of the resolution. The main idea of the resolution is that even though the linear shear is linearly stable, slow orbits (also called quasi-steady states) in arbitrarily …
