Stability analysis of two-dimensional ideal flows with applications to viscous fluids and plasmas

Abstract

We are interested in the stability analysis of two-dimensional incompressible inviscid fluids. Specifically, we revisit a recent result on the stability of Yudovich's solutions to the incompressible Euler equations in $L^\infty([0,T];H^1)$ by providing a new approach to its proof based on the idea of compactness extrapolation and by extending it to the whole plane. This new method of proof is robust and, when applied to viscous models, leads to a remarkable logarithmic improvement on the rate of convergence in the vanishing viscosity limit of two-dimensional fluids. Loosely speaking, this logarithmic gain is the result of the fact that, in appropriate high-regularity settings, the smoothness of solutions to the Euler equations at times $t\in [0,T)$ is strictly higher than their regularity at time $t=T$. This ``memory effect'' seems to be a general principle which is not exclusive to fluid mechanics. It is therefore likely to be observed in other setting and deserves further investigation. Finally, we also apply the stability results on Euler systems to the study of two-dimensional ideal plasmas and establish their convergence, in strong topologies, to solutions of magnetohydrodynamic systems, when the speed of light tends to infinity. The crux of this asymptotic analysis relies on a fine understanding of Maxwell's system.