Stationary solutions to the Navier-Stokes system in an exterior plane domain: 90 years of search, mysteries and insights (Q6156889)

The paper mainly consists in a review of results concerning boundary value problems for the stationary Navier-Stokes system posed in \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\): \( -\Delta w+(w\cdot \nabla )w+\nabla p=f\), \(\nabla \cdot w=0\), in \(\mathbb{R} ^{2}\), \(w\rightarrow w_{\infty }=\lambda e_{1}\) as \(\left\vert z\right\vert \rightarrow \infty \), or in a planar exterior domain: \(-\Delta w+(w\cdot \nabla )w+\nabla p=f\), \(\nabla \cdot w=0\), in \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{2}\) , \(w\mid _{\partial \Omega }=\lambda e_{1}\), \(w\rightarrow 0\) as \(\left\vert z\right\vert \rightarrow \infty \). For the second problem, the authors recall the definition of D-solution as a solution with finite Dirichlet integral \(\int_{\Omega }\left\vert \nabla w\right\vert ^{2}<\infty \), and the invading domains method proposed by Leray, which consists to introduce \( \Omega _{k}=B_{R_{k}}\cap \Omega \), \(k=1,2,3,\ldots \), with \( R_{k}\rightarrow +\infty \), and to consider the second problem posed in \( \Omega _{k}\) replacing the boundary conditions by \(w\mid _{\partial \Omega _{k}}=0\) and \(w_{k}=w_{\infty }\) for \(r=R_{k}\). The authors recall some existence results already obtained and still open problems. They also recall properties of D-solutions. For the first problem posed in \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\), they recall the blow-down method they proposed in their earlier paper [J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 158, 71--89 (2022; Zbl 1513.76068)] and which proves an asymptotic estimate for a sequence of D-solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in an annulus whose radii satisfy growth properties. They prove that if \(f\) is compactly supported in \(B_{R}\) for some \(R>0\) and \(\left\Vert f\right\Vert _{W^{-1,2}(B_{2R})}<+\infty \), there exists a universal constant \(\varepsilon _{1}>0\) such that, if \(\left\Vert f\right\Vert _{H^{-1}(B_{2R})}<\frac{\varepsilon _{1}}{ln^{\frac{1}{2}}(2+\frac{1}{ \lambda R})}\lambda \), and the Leray solution \(w_{L}\) satisfies \(w_{0}=w_{\infty }=\lambda e_{1}\). If, in addition, the total force \(\mathcal{F}=\int_{ \mathbb{R}^{2}}f=0\), then the factor \(ln^{\frac{1}{2}}(2+\frac{1}{\lambda R}) \) can be removed in the previous assumption. They also prove that if \(f\) is compactly supported in \(B_{R}\) for some \(R>0\), \(\left\Vert f\right\Vert _{W^{-1,2}(B_{2R})}<+\infty \), \(\mathcal{F}=\int_{\mathbb{R}^{2}}f=0\), and \( w_{\infty }=0\), the Leray solution \(w_{L}\) satisfies \(w_{0}=w_{\infty }=0\). In the last part of their paper, the authors describe the asymptotic form of D-solutions with nonzero limit velocity. They introduce the Oseen system. They build the Finn-Smith solution and prove that it is the unique solution to the obstacle problem under an hypothesis on the domain \(\Omega \). They also prove a uniqueness result for the stationary Navier-Stokes problem under further hypotheses on the force \(f\). They conclude with open questions and further remarks.