Stability of stationary solutions of the forced Navier-Stokes equations on the two-torus. (Q1848468)

The authors study linear and nonlinear stability of stationary solutions of forced two-dimension\-al incompressible Navier~Stokes equations in the domain \([0,2\pi] \times [0,2\pi/ \alpha]\), where \(\alpha\in (0,1]\), with doubly periodic boundary conditions. The fluid is assumed to be driven by a monoscale forcing and damped by various dissipation mechanisms including Ekman drag, molecular viscosity, and hyper- and hypoviscosity. For the analysis, Navier-Stokes equations are written in abstract form in a Hilbert space, and the solution is represented by Fourier expansion in an orthonormal eigenfunction basis. Then, for the linear problem the authors obtain sufficient condition or stability and necessary conditions for unstability by employing the classical energy-enstrophy argument. The nonlinear problem is studied by using the equivalence of definitions of nonlinear stability in energy and enstrophy norms. This equivalence allows to derive optimal conditions for nonlinear stability, including both the high- and low-Reynolds-number limits.