Global solutions for the Muskat problem in the scaling invariant Besov space $\dot B^1_{\infty, 1}$

Abstract

The one-phase and two-phase Muskat problems with arbitrary viscosity contrast are studied in all dimensions. They are quasilinear parabolic equations for the graph free boundary. We prove that small data in the scaling invariant homogeneous Besov space $\dot B^1_{\infty, 1}$ lead to unique global solutions. The proof exploits a new structure of the Dirichlet-Neumann operator which allows us to implement a robust fixed-point argument. As a consequence of this method, the initial data is only assumed to be in $\dot B^1_{\infty, 1}$ and the solution map is Lipschitz continuous in the same topology. For the general Muskat problem, the only known scaling invariant result was obtained in the Wiener algebra (plus an $L^2$ assumption) which is strictly contained in $\dot B^1_{\infty, 1}$.