The geometry of axisymmetric ideal fluid flows with swirl

Abstract: The sectional curvature of the volume preserving diffeomorphism group of a Riemannian manifold

M

can give information about the stability of inviscid, incompressible fluid flows on

M

. We demonstrate that the submanifold of the volumorphism group of the solid flat torus generated by axisymmetric fluid flows with swirl, denoted by

m a t h c a l D_{m u, E} (M)

, has positive sectional curvature in every section containing the field

X = u (r) p a r t i a l_{h} e t a

iff

p a r t i a l_{r} (r u^{2}) > 0

. This is in sharp contrast to the situation on

m a t h c a l D_{m u} (M)

, where only Killing fields

X

have nonnegative sectional curvature in all sections containing it. We also show that this criterion guarantees the existence of conjugate points on

m a t h c a l D_{m u, E} (M)

along the geodesic defined by

X

.

Review text

The authors consider a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) of dimension at least two with Riemannian volume form \(\mu \) and they especially take \( M=D^{2}\times S^{1}\) where \(D^{2}\) is the unit disk in \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\) and \( S^{1}\) is the unit circle. They introduce the collection \(\mathcal{D}_{\mu }(M)\) of smooth volume-preserving diffeomorphisms (volumorphisms) on \(M\) and the group \(\mathcal{D}_{\mu ,E}(M)\) of volumorphisms which commute with the flow of a Killing field \(E\). This is linked to axisymmetric fluid flows with swirl. The purpose of the paper is to derive properties of the sectional curvature defined as \(\overline{K}(X,Y)=\int_{M}\left\langle R(Y,X)X, \overline{Y}\right\rangle \mu \) where \(R\) is the curvature tensor defined as \(R(Y,X)Y=P(\nabla _{Y}P(\nabla _{X}X)-\nabla _{X}P(\nabla _{Y}X)+\nabla _{ \left[ X,Y\right] }X)\), \(P(X)\) being the projection onto the divergence-free part of the smooth vector field \(X\). The main tool consists introducing the Fourier series of a smooth vector field \(Y\) tangent to \(\mathcal{D}_{\mu ,E}(M)\) at the identity \(Y(r,z)=-\frac{g_{z}(r,z)}{r}\partial _{r}+\frac{ g_{r}(r,z)}{r}\partial _{z}+f(r,z)\partial _{\theta }\) with \(f(0,z)=g(0,z)=0\) and \(g(1,z)\) constant in z: \(Y(r,z)=\sum_{n\in \mathbb{Z}}Y_{n}(r,z)=\sum_{n \in \mathbb{Z}}e^{inz}\left[ -\frac{in}{r}g_{n}(r)\partial _{r}+\frac{ g_{n}^{\prime }(r)}{r}\partial _{z}+f_{n}(r)\partial _{\theta }\right] \). The main result of the paper computes \(\overline{K}(X,Y_{n})\) when \( X=u(r)\partial _{\theta }\) and proves that the curvature is positive. The authors then derive a stability property of inviscid and incompressible fluid flows on \(M\). They finally prove the existence of conjugate points on \( \mathcal{D}_{\mu ,E}(M)\) along the geodesic defined by \(X\) considering a Jacobi equation and a Bessel-type Sturm-Liouville problem.

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