A moving boundary problem motivated by electric breakdown. I: Spectrum of linear perturbations (Q2389368)

The present paper, which is part I of a two-paper sequence, is devoted to the spectral properties of the linear stability operator, associated with infinitesimal perturbations of a circle. The authors reformulate the problem defined by the equations \[ \begin{aligned} \varphi^+&=-\ell \mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{E}^+, \tag{1}\\ v_n&=- \mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{E}^+, \tag{2}\\ \triangle\varphi &=0 \tag{3}\end{aligned} \] (\(\ell\) is the thickness of the surface charge layer, \(2R\) typical diameter of the streamer, \(\varphi\) -- the potential, \(\mathbf{E}\) -- the strength of electric field, ``\(+\)'' means the limiting value of the magnitudes) by standard conformal mapping, and present the PDE governing the time evolution of infinitesimal perturbations of the circle. This material has been presented before in [\textit{B. Meulenbroek, U. Ebert} and \textit{L. Schäfer}, ``Regularization of moving boundaries in a Laplacian field by a mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary condition: Exact results'', Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 195004 (2005), ``Convective stabilization of a Laplacian movong boundary problem with kinetic undercooling'', SIAM J. Appl. Math. 68, No. 1, 292--310 (2007; Zbl 1137.35081)], where also the general solution of the PDE in the case \(\varepsilon=\frac{\ell}{R}=1\) has been discussed in detail. The explicit solution found for \(\varepsilon=1\) shows that outside any fixed neighborhood of the rear of the bubble, the long-term behavior of infinitesimal perturbations is described by \(\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}e^{\lambda_n t}\beta_{\lambda_n}\), where \(\lambda_n\) is the \(n\)th eigenvalue (ordered according to absolute value) of the linear stability operator and \(\beta_{\lambda_n}\) is the corresponding eigenfunction. Then this eigenvalue value problem is studied for arbitrary \(\varepsilon>0\). It is shown that the linear stability operator, defined in an appropriate space of analytic functions, has a pure point spectrum. It is proven that there are no discrete eigenvalues with non-negative real part, except \(\lambda=0\) that corresponds to the trivial translation mode. A set of discrete, purely negative eigenvalues is calculated as a function of \(\varepsilon\); they smoothly extend the results found previously for \(\varepsilon=1\). The results suggests that as \(\varepsilon \to 0\), the spectrum degenerates to the trivial translation mode and this limit is discussed.