Orthogonality conditions and asymptotic stability in the Stefan problem with surface tension (Q715371)

The author studies the long-time nonlinear stability of steady-state solutions of the two-phase Stefan problem with surface tension. First, modulation equations and a reformulation of the Stefan problem in a set of new tubular coordinates are derived. Next, the author reformulates the Stefan problem on a fixed domain and proves high-order energy identities. A Poincaré type estimate for the solution which is helpful in showing the decay of the solution on a bounded time interval, and the positive-definiteness of the energy are proven. With the help of the above mentioned results, the author proves the local existence of the solution next. A suitable smallness assumption on the initial data combined with the above mentioned decay finally yields the main result of this paper which is the existence of a global-in-time solution.