Asymptotic behavior for strong solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations with external forces (Q5946006)

The asymptotic behavior of the \(L^\alpha\) norm \((\alpha>2)\) of strong solutions to the following initial value problem for the Navier-Stokes equations is studied: \[ \begin{aligned} v_t-\mu \Delta v+(v\cdot \nabla) v+ \nabla p=f\quad & \text{in }[0,\infty) \times\mathbb{R}^n\\ \nabla\cdot v=0 \quad & \text{in }[0,\infty) \times\mathbb{R}^n \tag{1}\\ v|_{t=0}= a\quad & \text{in } \mathbb{R}^n (n\geq 2).\end{aligned} \] The initial velocity \(a(x)\) and external forces \(f (t,x)\) are given, the vector field of velocity \(v(t,x)\) and the scalar field of pressure \(p(t,x)\) are unknown. In this paper \(a\) and \(f\) are assumed to be weakly divergence free, i.e., \[ \nabla\cdot f=0,\;\nabla\cdot a=0\text{ a.e. in } (0, \infty) \tag{2} \] are satisfied in the sense of distributions. The main result of this paper states that (for \(n\geq 3\) and \(\alpha\geq n)\) if \(a\in L^\alpha \cap L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)\) and \(f\in L^1\bigl( 0,+\infty; L^\alpha L^2 (\mathbb{R}^n) \bigr)\cap L^\infty \bigl(0,+\infty; L^\alpha(\mathbb{R}^n) \bigr)\), satisfy (2) and the norms of \(a\) and \(f\) in these spaces are sufficiently small, then: a) when \(\alpha>n\), problem (1) admits a unique solution \[ v\in C \bigl( [0,+\infty);L^2\cap L^\alpha \bigr)\cap L^2(0,+ \infty;H^2); \] b) when \(\alpha >n\), problem (1) admits a unique solution \(v\in C([0,+\infty); L^2\cap L^\alpha)\). Moreover, we have \(\|v(t)\|_{L^\alpha}\to 0\) as \(t\to+ \infty\). A similar result is given for \(n=2\) and, \(\alpha>n=2\) without assumption of the smallness for \(a\) and \(f\).