Stability of two-dimensional steady Euler flows with concentrated vorticity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the stability two-dimensional (2D) steady Euler flows with sharply concentrated vorticity in a simply-connected bounded domain. These flows are obtained as maximizers of the kinetic energy subject to the constraint that the vorticity is compactly supported in a finite number of disjoint regions of small diameter. We prove the nonlinear stability of these flows when the vorticity is concentrated in one small region, or in two small regions with opposite signs. The proof is achieved by showing that these flows constitute a compact and isolated set of local maximizers of the kinetic energy on an isovortical surface. The separation property of the stream function plays a crucial role in validating the isolatedness.