On Moffatt's magnetic relaxation equations

Abstract

We investigate the stability properties for a family of equations introduced by Moffatt to model magnetic relaxation. These models preserve the topology of magnetic streamlines, contain a cubic nonlinearity, and yet have a favorable $L^2$ energy structure. We consider the local and global in time well-posedness of these models and establish a difference between the behavior as $t\to \infty$ with respect to weak and strong norms.