A moving boundary problem motivated by electric breakdown. I: Spectrum of linear perturbations

Abstract: An interfacial approximation of the streamer stage in the evolution of sparks and lightning can be written as a Laplacian growth model regularized by a `kinetic undercooling' boundary condition. We study the linear stability of uniformly translating circles that solve the problem in two dimensions. In a space of smooth perturbations of the circular shape, the stability operator is found to have a pure point spectrum. Except for the zero eigenvalue for infinitesimal translations, all eigenvalues are shown to have negative real part. Therefore perturbations decay exponentially in time. We calculate the spectrum through a combination of asymptotic and series evaluation. In the limit of vanishing regularization parameter, all eigenvalues are found to approach zero in a singular fashion, and this asymptotic behavior is worked out in detail. A consideration of the eigenfunctions indicates that a strong intermediate growth may occur for generic initial perturbations. Both the linear and the nonlinear initial value problem are considered in a second paper.

Review text

The present paper, which is part I of a two-paper sequence, is devoted to the spectral properties of the linear stability operator, associated with infinitesimal perturbations of a circle. The authors reformulate the problem defined by the equations \[ \begin{aligned} \varphi^+&=-\ell \mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{E}^+, \tag{1}\\ v_n&=- \mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{E}^+, \tag{2}\\ \triangle\varphi &=0 \tag{3}\end{aligned} \] (\(\ell\) is the thickness of the surface charge layer, \(2R\) typical diameter of the streamer, \(\varphi\) -- the potential, \(\mathbf{E}\) -- the strength of electric field, ``\(+\) means the limiting value of the magnitudes) by standard conformal mapping, and present the PDE governing the time evolution of infinitesimal perturbations of the circle. This material has been presented before in [\textit{B. Meulenbroek, U. Ebert} and \textit{L. Schäfer}, ``Regularization of moving boundaries in a Laplacian field by a mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary condition: Exact results, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 195004 (2005), ``Convective stabilization of a Laplacian movong boundary problem with kinetic undercooling, SIAM J. Appl. Math. 68, No. 1, 292--310 (2007; Zbl 1137.35081)], where also the general solution of the PDE in the case \(\varepsilon=\frac{\ell}{R}=1\) has been discussed in detail. The explicit solution found for \(\varepsilon=1\) shows that outside any fixed neighborhood of the rear of the bubble, the long-term behavior of infinitesimal perturbations is described by \(\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}e^{\lambda_n t}\beta_{\lambda_n}\), where \(\lambda_n\) is the \(n\)th eigenvalue (ordered according to absolute value) of the linear stability operator and \(\beta_{\lambda_n}\) is the corresponding eigenfunction. Then this eigenvalue value problem is studied for arbitrary \(\varepsilon>0\). It is shown that the linear stability operator, defined in an appropriate space of analytic functions, has a pure point spectrum. It is proven that there are no discrete eigenvalues with non-negative real part, except \(\lambda=0\) that corresponds to the trivial translation mode. A set of discrete, purely negative eigenvalues is calculated as a function of \(\varepsilon\); they smoothly extend the results found previously for \(\varepsilon=1\). The results suggests that as \(\varepsilon \to 0\), the spectrum degenerates to the trivial translation mode and this limit is discussed.

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