On the Free Boundary Problems for the Ideal Incompressible MHD Equations

Abstract

We investigate the general plasma-vacuum interface problems for the ideal incompressible MHD equations with or without surface tension and prove their nonlinear local well-posedness in standard Sobolev spaces under either non-zero surface tension or the stability condition that the magnetic fields are everywhere non-collinear on the interface. In particular, the results show that both capillary forces and tangential magnetic fields can stabilize the motion of the plasma-vacuum interfaces. Moreover, the vanishing surface tension limit results are established under the Rayleigh-Taylor sign condition or the non-collinearity condition. All these results hold with no graph assumption on the free interface.