Convergence rates in homogenization of Stokes systems (Q2634202)

The author proves estimates for the difference between the solution \( u_{\varepsilon }\) of a Stokes problem with periodically oscillating coefficients and its homogenized limit \(u_{0}\). He starts with the Stokes problem \(\mathcal{L}_{\varepsilon }(u_{\varepsilon })+\nabla p_{\varepsilon }=f\), \(\operatorname{div}(u_{\varepsilon })=g\), posed in a \(C^{1,1}\) bounded domain \( \Omega \) of \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\). The boundary condition \(u_{\varepsilon }=f\) is imposed on \(\partial \Omega \). The Stokes operator \(\mathcal{L}_{\varepsilon }\) is defined as \(\mathcal{L}_{\varepsilon }=-\operatorname{div}(A(x/\varepsilon )\nabla )\), where the matrix \(A\) is periodic and satisfies uniform coercivity and continuity properties with a constant \(\mu >0\). \(f\) and \(g\) satisfy the compatibility condition \(\int_{\Omega }g=\int_{\partial \Omega }f\cdot n\). The first main result of the paper proves that \(\left\| u_{\varepsilon }-u_{0}\right\| _{L^{2}(\Omega )}\leq C\varepsilon \left\| u_{0}\right\| _{H^{2}(\Omega )}\) for some constant \(C\) which only depends on \(d,\mu \) and \(\Omega \). The second main result improves this convergence rate when a corrector is introduced which involves a Steklov smoothing operator. The author first gathers the properties of this Steklov operator. Then he recalls the homogenization result within this context. For the proof of the main results, the author essentially introduces the solution of a local problem. Then he proves the convergence rate for the pressure.