Local energy weak solutions for the Navier-Stokes equations in the half-space

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to prove the existence of global in time local energy weak solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in the half-space $\mathbb R^3_+$. Such solutions are sometimes called Lemari\'e-Rieusset solutions in the whole space $\mathbb R^3$. The main tool in our work is an explicit representation formula for the pressure, which is decomposed into a Helmholtz-Leray part and a harmonic part due to the boundary. We also explain how our result enables to reprove the blow-up of the scale-critical $L^3(\mathbb R^3_+)$ norm obtained by Barker and Seregin for solutions developing a singularity in finite time.