Existence of steady multiple vortex patches to the vortex-wave system (Q827437)

The authors consider the 2D Euler equations for an incompressible inviscid fluid written as \(\partial _{t}\mathfrak{v}+(\mathfrak{v}\cdot \nabla ) \mathfrak{v}=-\nabla P\), \(\nabla \cdot \mathfrak{v}=0\), posed in \(D\times (0,\infty )\), where \(D\) is a bounded and simply connected domain in \(\mathbb{ R}^{2}\), with smooth boundary \(\partial D\). They add the boundary condition \(\mathfrak{v}\cdot \nu =0\) on \(\partial D\times (0,\infty )\). From the Euler equation, they deduce the equation \(\partial _{t}\omega +\mathfrak{v}\cdot \nabla \omega =0\) for the scalar vorticity \(\omega =\partial _{1}\mathfrak{v} _{2}-\partial _{2}\mathfrak{v}_{1}\) and they write the velocity \(\mathfrak{v} \) as \(\mathfrak{v}=J\nabla \psi =(\partial _{2}\psi -\partial _{1}\psi )\), where \(\psi \) is the stream function solution of \(-\Delta \psi =\omega \). The authors consider \(l\) point vortices in this fluid, whose evolution is described through the Kirchhoff-Routh equation \(\frac{dx_{i}}{dt}=-\kappa _{i}J\nabla H(x_{i})+\sum_{j=1,\ldots ,l,j\neq i}\kappa _{j}J\nabla _{x_{i}}G(x_{j},x_{i})\), where \(\kappa _{i}\) is the vorticity strength of the \(i\)-th point vortex, \(G\) is the 2D Green function and \(H(x)=\frac{1}{2} h(x,x)\), \(h\) being the regular part of \(G\). The authors finally consider the stationary case for this mixed problem and they introduce the notion of weak solution to this problem. The main result of the paper proves the existence, under some conditions, of a weak solution to this mixed stationary problem, whose expression is given in terms of the \(\kappa _{i}\). For the proof, the authors essentially proceed through direct computations using the Green function and they quote results from the paper by the first author et al. in [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 147, No. 2, 775--784 (2019; Zbl 1444.76036)].