On the global existence for the Muskat problem (Q1932209)

Summary: The Muskat problem models the dynamics of the interface between two incompressible immiscible fluids with different constant densities. In this work we prove three results. First we prove an \(L^2(\mathbb R)\) maximum principle, in the form of a new ``log'' conservation law which is satisfied by the equation for the interface. Our second result is a proof of global existence for unique strong solutions if the initial data is smaller than an explicitly computable constant, for instance \(\|f\|_1 \leq 1/5\). Previous results of this sort used a small constant \(\epsilon \ll1\) which was not explicit. Lastly, we prove a global existence result for Lipschitz continuous solutions with initial data that satisfy \(\|f_0\|_{L^\infty}<\infty\) and \(\|\partial_x f_0\|_{L^\infty}<1\). We take advantage of the fact that the bound \(\|\partial_x f_0\|_{L^\infty}<1\) is propagated by solutions, which grants strong compactness properties in comparison to the log conservation law.