Flexibility and rigidity of steady states of the two-dimensional Euler equations in an infinite channel

Abstract

We study steady solutions to the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equations in an infinite channel, whose far-field limits are uniformly non-stagnant shear flows. In the smooth category,for a broad class of prescribed far-field shear profiles, non-shear steady states exist via the construction of two-dimensional solutions of the semilinear elliptic equations of stream function by the min--max method. In the analytic category, we establish a comparison principle for the analytic steady states and we show for a dense family of analytic uniformly non-stagnant shear profiles, every analytic steady state with the prescribed far field must itself be a shear flow. In particular, there are far-field shear profiles which exhibit flexibility in the smooth category but rigidity in the analytic category. Furthermore, the dense rigidity is sharp in the sense that there exists analytic shear profile which admits flexibility in the analytic category.