On the well-posedness of the damped time-harmonic Galbrun equation and the equations of stellar oscillations

Abstract

We study the time-harmonic Galbrun equation describing the propagation of sound in the presence of a steady background flow. With additional rotational and gravitational terms these equations are also fundamental in helio- and asteroseismology as a model for stellar oscillations. For a simple damping model we prove well-posedness of these equations, i.e. uniqueness, existence, and stability of solutions under mild conditions on the parameters (essentially subsonic flows). The main tool of our analysis is a generalized Helmholtz decomposition.