Nonlinear stability and instability of rotating Riesz star solutions of the compressible Euler-Riesz equations

Abstract

The compressible Euler--Riesz equations arise in the modelling of a wide range of physical phenomena, including stellar dynamics, plasma physics, and mathematical biology. We study rotating steady states of the attractive compressible Euler--Riesz equations, which we call rotating Riesz stars, and establish existence and nonlinear stability or instability results in both the mass-subcritical and mass-supercritical regimes. In the mass-subcritical regime, we prove the existence of rotating Riesz stars under suitable subhomogeneity assumptions on the angular momentum profile. We then establish their nonlinear stability through a concentration compactness argument adapted to the axisymmetric setting. Rotation creates new compactness difficulties, most notably the possibility that minimising sequences are tight along rings whose radii diverge to infinity. In the mass-supercritical regime, we prove existence in the polytropic setting under suitable superhomogeneity assumptions on the angular momentum profile, thereby extending the theory beyond the small angular velocity regime. The proof requires a careful analysis of mass-preserving scalings, which are more delicate than in the non-rotating case. Finally, by analysing the concavity of the free-energy along these scalings, we establish the instability of the resulting mass-supercritical rotating Riesz stars. Our results show that rotation can have either a stabilising or a destabilising effect, depending on the singularity of the Riesz interaction.