Necessary and sufficient conditions for the stability of flows of incompressible viscous fluids (Q1337968)

We perturb a steady flow of an incompressible viscous fluid and derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the marginal cases for monotonic energy stability and stability against small (infinitesimal) disturbances to coincide. Evaluation of this condition in two examples singles out, in terms of the parameters of the problem, the cases where necessary and sufficient conditions for stability coincide and thus the steady flow first becomes unstable, together with the class of perturbations responsible for the instability. The examples we treat are plane parallel shear flow with a non-symmetric profile in an infinite rotating layer and the effect of rotation on convection.