Stability of purely convective steady-states of fractional Boussinesq equations in an exterior domain

Abstract

A thermal convection flow in the three-dimensional unbounded fluid domain exterior to a sphere is considered. The viscosity force is determined by a fractional power of the Stokes operator. A purely conductive steady state arises due to the fluid heated from the sphere. A weak solution of the fluid motion problem is obtained and global stability of the steady-state solution in $L^2$ is provided.