Uniform in gravity estimates for 2D water waves

TL;DR

This paper establishes uniform local well-posedness for 2D gravity water waves, including interfaces with corners and cusps, and explores the zero gravity case with improved criteria and applications.

Contribution

It introduces a uniform-in-gravity local well-posedness framework for water waves with singular interfaces and extends results to the zero gravity scenario with optimality considerations.

Findings

Uniform well-posedness for interfaces with corners and cusps.

Improved blow-up criteria for singular solutions when gravity is positive.

Existence results for water waves with no gravity and interfaces with angled crests.

Abstract

We consider the 2D gravity water waves equation on an infinite domain. We prove a local wellposedness result which allows interfaces with corners and cusps as initial data and which is such that the time of existence of solutions is uniform even as the gravity parameter $g \to 0$. For $g>0$, we prove an improved blow up criterion for these singular solutions and we also prove an existence result for $g = 0$. Moreover the energy estimate used to prove this result is scaling invariant. As an application of this energy estimate, we then consider the water wave equation with no gravity where the fluid domain is homeomorphic to the disc. We prove a local wellposedness result which allows for interfaces with angled crests and cusps as initial data and then by a rigidity argument, we show that there exists initial interfaces with angled crests for which the energy blows up in finite time, thereby proving the optimality of this local wellposedness result. For smooth initial data, this local wellposedness result gives a longer time of existence as compared to previous results when the initial velocity is small and we also improve upon the blow up criterion.