A unified theory of existence of suitable weak solutions to the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for non-decaying initial data

Abstract

We consider any cover $\mathscr{C}$ of $\mathbb{R}^3$ by balls of radius bigger or equal $1$ satisfying two conditions: (i) any ball intersects at most $\sigma>0$ other balls, and (ii) intersecting balls have comparable sizes. We consider a natural Morrey-type space such that the $L^2_{\mathrm{uloc}}$ setting of Lemari\'e-Rieusset (Recent Developments in the Navier-Stokes Problem, 2002) and the dyadic-type space considered by Bradshaw and Kukavica (J. Math. Fluid Mech., 22(1), 2020) are particular cases. We provide a priori estimates and prove local existence of weak solutions in two cases; first, when there exists $\epsilon>0$ such that $|B|^{1/3} \lesssim |x_B|^{1-\epsilon}$ for all $B\in \mathscr{C}$, where $x_B$ denotes the center of~$B$, or when $|B|^{1/3} \gtrsim 1+ |x_B|$ for all $B\in\mathscr{C}$. In particular, we introduce a new non-divergence-free approach to the construction of weak solutions, which simplifies the existence proof in the $L^2_{\mathrm{uloc}}$ setting. In addition, for the dyadic setting, we do not require vanishing at the spatial infinity. The constructed solutions are suitable in the sense of Caffarelli, Kohn, and Nirenberg, thus allowing an application of the partial regularity theory.