On stability of steady circular flows in a two-dimensional exterior disk (Q529852)

The purpose of this paper is to study the \(L^2\) stability of a certain special solution (1) to a two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation. The method of proof is to evade the difficulty of the nonexistent Hardy inequality in the two-dimensional case. Instead, the spectral property of the perturbed Stokes operator \(A_{\alpha}\) is studied by focusing on the rotational symmetry and the circular flow of (1). This leads to the introduction of polar coordinates and the corresponding modified Bessel functions. The operator \(A_{\alpha}\) is analysed by solving the Poisson equation together with the corresponding Biot-Savart law. The Helmholtz projection and distribution theory are also used. The proofs use Arzela-Ascoli theorem, Marcinkiewicz interpolation theorem, integration by parts, Cauchy-Schwarz, Minkowski, Gagliardo-Nirenberg, Hölder inequalities, contraction mapping theorem, Relich theorem, and mean value theorem. In an appendix, some theorems for modified Bessel functions, which are used in the text, are proved or quoted.