Suppression of Fluid Echoes and Sobolev Stability Threshold for 2D Dissipative Fluid Equations Around Couette Flow

Abstract

We study the Sobolev stability thresholds of 2d dissipative fluid equations around Couette flow on the domain $\mathbb T\times \mathbb R$. We prove a bound for general nonlinear interactions, which, for several fluid equations, reduces the proof of nonlinear stability to a linear stability analysis. We apply this approach to the examples of Navier-Stokes, Boussinesq and magnetohydrodynamic equations around Couette flow. This improves the Sobolev stability threshold for the Boussinesq equations around Couette flow and large affine temperature to $1/3$ and for the MHD equations around Couette flow and constant magnetic field to $1/3^+$.