Non-existence of splash singularities for the two-fluid Euler--Navier-Stokes system

Abstract

We consider a system of two incompressible fluids separated by a free interface. The first fluid is inviscid, governed by the Euler system, while the second fluid has positive viscosity and is governed by the Navier-Stokes system. We formulate a notion of splash-type self-intersection singularities, and show that this system cannot form such a singularity in finite time. The main obstacle in our analysis is to handle the effect of bulk vorticity induced by the Navier-Stokes flow. To the best of our knowledge this is the first result on preclusion of splash-type singularities in the presence of non-trivial vorticity interior to one of the fluids.