On variable viscosity and enhanced dissipation

Abstract

In this article we consider the 2D Navier-Stokes equations with variable viscosity depending on the vertical position. As our main result we establish linear enhanced dissipation near the non-affine stationary states replacing Couette flow. Moreover it turns out that the shear flow overcompensates for weakening viscosity: decreasing viscosity leads to stronger enhanced dissipation and increasing viscosity leads to weaker dissipation than in the constant viscosity case.