Global persistence of nearly radial concentrated vortices in a bounded domain

Abstract

In this paper, we study the evolution of nearly radial concentrated vortices for the incompressible Euler equation in a bounded planar domain. We prove that if a single vortex is initially concentrated near a strict local minimum point of the Robin function of the domain and is close, up to translation, to its symmetric decreasing rearrangement, then both its shape and location remain uniformly controlled for all time. We also establish an analogous result for a pair of opposite-sign vortices near a strict local minimum point of the corresponding Kirchhoff--Routh function. No symmetry is imposed on the domain or the initial data, and the initial data need not be close to any steady state. To prove these results, we develop a new Lyapunov mechanism for the evolution of vorticity governed by the Euler equation starting from such initial data, providing quantitative control of both vortex shape and location. Specifically, we combine kinetic-energy conservation and vorticity equimeasurability with several fixed-time estimates to obtain a conditional estimate, and then use a set-valued first-exit argument to propagate it globally in time.