Fluids, elasticity, geometry, and the existence of wrinkled solutions (Q1683784)

The purpose of this article is to unite three-dimensional differential geometry, i.e., the Gauss-Codazzi equations, with PDEs, and map nonlinear PDEs to embedded Riemannian manifolds. In this way, a dynamic fluid problem is transformed by the embedding to a static problem for a so-called wrinkled manifold with discontinuous second derivatives, and the metric together with the second fundamental form for the evolving manifold become the dynamic variables. It is well-known that the solvability of the Gauss-Codazzi equations is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an isometric embedding. The main existence theorem, which states that there exists a local solution to the incompressible Euler equations and a two-dimensional embedded Riemannian manifold, is proved by the Cauchy-Kowalewsky theorem. The main theorem, which is proved by the Nash-Kuiper theorem, states that the short embedding can be approximated in a certain way. Finally, extensions to Navier-Stokes and Euler-Lagrange equations are discussed.