Lagrangian approach to global well-posedness of the viscous surface wave equations without surface tension

Abstract

In this paper, we revisit the global well-posedness of the classical viscous surface waves in the absence of surface tension effect with the reference domain being the horizontal infinite slab, for which the first complete proof was given in Guo-Tice (2013, Analysis and PDE) via a hybrid of Eulerian and Lagrangian schemes. The fluid dynamics are governed by the gravity-driven incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Even though Lagrangian formulation is most natural to study free boundary value problems for incompressible flows, few mathematical works for global existence are based on such an approach in the absence of surface tension effect, due to breakdown of Beale's transformation. We develop a mathematical approach to establish global well-posedness based on the Lagrangian framework by analyzing suitable "good unknowns" associated with the problem, which requires no nonlinear compatibility conditions on the initial data.