Local energy weak solutions for the Navier-Stokes equations in the half-space (Q1741658)

The paper is devoted to the proof of existence of local energy weak solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in the upper half of the three-dimensional space for initial data in the space of squared integrable vector functions with zero divergence. The study of weak finite energy solutions has a long history which goes back to the seminal works of \textit{J. Leray} [Acta Math. 63, 193--248 (1934; JFM 60.0726.05)] and \textit{E. Hopf} [Math. Nachr. 4, 213--231 (1951; Zbl 0042.10604)]. The study of infinite energy solutions is much more recent. The authors study a special kind of infinite energy solutions, so called local energy weak solutions, for which the energy is locally uniformly bounded. These solutions were pioneered by \textit{P. G. Lemarié-Rieusset} [Recent developments in the Navier-Stokes problem. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman \& Hall/CRC (2002; Zbl 1034.35093)] in the whole three-dimensional space and later extended by \textit{N. Kikuchi} and \textit{G. Seregin} [Transl., Ser. 2, Am. Math. Soc. 220, 141--164 (2007; Zbl 1361.35130)]. The authors extend the notion of such solutions to the half-space and prove local in time as well as global in time existence results. This answered the open question raised in the paper of \textit{T. Barker} and \textit{G. Seregin} in [Math. Ann. 369, No. 3--4, 1327--1352 (2017; Zbl 1383.35138)]. The main tool used to prove local and global existence is an explicit representation formula for the pressure, which is decomposed into a Helmholtz-Leray part and a harmonic part due to the boundary. The authors also explain how these results enable to reprove the blow-up of the scale-critical \(L^3\) norm obtained by Barker and Seregin [loc. cit.] for solutions developing a singularity in finite time.