Global regularity and infinite Prandtl number limit of temperature patches for the 2D Boussinesq system

TL;DR

This paper proves global regularity of temperature patches in the 2D Boussinesq system, studies the infinite Prandtl number limit, and shows convergence to solutions of the fractional Stokes-transport equation, extending previous regularity results.

Contribution

It establishes the global persistence of temperature patch regularity in the 2D Boussinesq system and analyzes the infinite Prandtl number limit, confirming convergence to fractional Stokes-transport solutions.

Findings

Temperature patches maintain their regularity globally in time.

Solutions converge to fractional Stokes-transport equations as Prandtl number approaches infinity.

The regularity persistence extends previous results to all k ≥ 1.

Abstract

We prove global regularity and study the infinite Prandtl number limit of temperature patches for the 2D non-diffusive Boussinesq system with dissipation in the full subcritical regime. The temperature satisfies a transport equation and the temperature initial data are given in the form of non-constant patches. Our first main result is a persistence of regularity of the patches globally in time. More precisely, we prove that if the boundary of the initial temperature patch lies in $C^{k+\gamma}$ with $k\geq 1$ and $\gamma\in(0,1)$ then this initial regularity is preserved for all time. Importantly, our proof is robust enough to show uniform dependence on the Prandtl number in some cases. This result solves a question in Khor and Xu \cite{KX22} concerning the global control of the curvature of the patch boundary. Besides, by studying the limit when the Prandtl number goes to infinity, we find that the patch solutions to the 2D Boussinesq-Navier-Stokes system in the torus converge to the unique patch solutions of the (fractional) Stokes-transport equation and that the $C^{k+\gamma}$ regularity of the patch boundary is globally preserved. This allows us to extend the $C^{k+\gamma}$ persistence result of Grayer II \cite{Gray23} from the range $k\in \{0,1,2\}$ to the full range $k\geq 1$.