Global Well-Posedness of Classical Solutions with Large Oscillations and Vacuum to the Three-Dimensional Isentropic Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations

TL;DR

This paper proves the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the 3D isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations with large oscillations and vacuum states, extending previous results to more general initial conditions.

Contribution

It establishes the first global classical solutions allowing large oscillations and vacuum, broadening the understanding of the equations' well-posedness under less restrictive initial data.

Findings

Global existence and uniqueness of solutions with vacuum

Solutions can have large oscillations and compact support

Initial vacuum regions can be arbitrarily large

Abstract

We establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the Cauchy problem for the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in three spatial dimensions with smooth initial data which are of small energy but possibly large oscillations with constant state as far field which could be either vacuum or non-vacuum. The initial density is allowed to vanish and the spatial measure of the set of vacuum can be arbitrarily large, in particular, the initial density can even have compact support. These results generalize previous results on classical solutions for initial densities being strictly away from vacuum, and are the first for global classical solutions which may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states.