Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

Global Well-Posedness and Decay for the Viscous Surface Wave Problem Without Surface Tension

PDE and Applied Math Seminar

Speaker: Ian Tice, Brown University
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 3:10PM

We study the incompressible, gravity-driven Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensional domains with free upper boundaries and fixed lower boundaries, in both the horizontally periodic and non-periodic settings. The effect of surface tension is not included. We employ a novel two-tier nonlinear energy method that couples the boundedness of certain high-regularity norms to the algebraic decay of lower-regularity norms. The algebraic decay allows us to balance the growth of the highest order derivatives of the free surface function, which then allows us to derive a priori estimates for solutions. We then prove local well-posedness in our energy space, which yields global well-posedness and decay. The novel LWP theory is established through the study of the linear Stokes problem in moving domains. This is joint work with Yan Guo.