Well-posedness of the linearized plasma-vacuum interface problem

Abstract

We consider the free boundary problem for the plasma-vacuum interface in ideal compressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). In the plasma region the flow is governed by the usual compressible MHD equations, while in the vacuum region we consider the pre-Maxwell dynamics for the magnetic field. At the free-interface we assume that the total pressure is continuous and that the magnetic field is tangent to the boundary. The plasma density does not go to zero continuously at the interface, but has a jump, meaning that it is bounded away from zero in the plasma region and it is identically zero in the vacuum region. Under a suitable stability condition satisfied at each point of the plasma-vacuum interface, we prove the well-posedness of the linearized problem in conormal Sobolev spaces.