On the removal of the barotropic condition in helicity studies of the compressible Euler and ideal compressible MHD equations

Abstract

The helicity is a topological conserved quantity of the Euler equations which imposes significant constraints on the dynamics of vortex lines. In the compressible setting the conservation law only holds under the assumption that the pressure is barotropic. We show that by introducing a new definition of helicity density $h_{\rho}=(\rho\textbf{u})\cdot\mbox{curl}\,(\rho\textbf{u})$ this assumption on the pressure can be removed, although $\int_V h_{\rho}dV$ is no longer conserved. However, we show for the non-barotropic compressible Euler equations that the new helicity density $h_{\rho}$ obeys an entropy-type relation (in the sense of hyperbolic conservation laws) whose flux $\textbf{J}_{\rho}$ contains all the pressure terms and whose source involves the potential vorticity $q = \omega \cdot \nabla \rho$. Therefore the rate of change of $\int_V h_{\rho}dV$ no longer depends on the pressure and is easier to analyse, as it only depends on the potential vorticity and kinetic energy as well as $\mbox{div}\,\textbf{u}$. This result also carries over to the inhomogeneous incompressible Euler equations for which the potential vorticity $q$ is a material constant. Therefore $q$ is bounded by its initial value $q_{0}=q(\textbf{x},\,0)$, which enables us to define an inverse resolution length scale $\lambda_{H}^{-1}$ whose upper bound is found to be proportional to $\|q_{0}\|_{\infty}^{2/7}$. In a similar manner, we also introduce a new cross-helicity density for the ideal non-barotropic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations.