\(L^ r\) stability of viscous incompressible fluid motions in unbounded domains (Q1323075)

The author considers the initial-boundary value problem for the Navier- Stokes equations. Under the assumptions that the initial velocity \(v_ 0\) and exterior forces are small in certain functional norms, the author shows that the strong unsteady solution \(v(t)\) to this problem exists and tends to the steady solution \(w\) as the time tends to \(\infty\). Furthermore, it is shown that \(v(t)-w\) decays in \(L^ r\)-norm \((3\leq r\leq \infty)\) at an algebraic rate, which seems to be optimal.