A Hölder estimate for the trajectories of the Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

We study solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in the class $L^\infty_t C^α_x$. Landau and Lifshitz [LL87] predicted that the Eulerian and Lagrangian temporal structure functions for turbulence exhibit $1/3$ and $1/2$ scaling laws, respectively. These laws were justified for the Euler equations in [Ise23,Ise25], assuming the spatial structure functions satisfies a $1/3$ scaling law. We demonstrate them in a viscous setting by proving that the $C^α_{t,x}$-norm of the solution and the $C^{1/(1-α)}$-norm of any fluid trajectory can be estimated by the $L^\infty_tC^α_x$-norm independently of the viscosity parameter $ν>0$, for times bounded away from zero by a positive power of $ν$.