Linear enhanced dissipation for the 2D Taylor-Couette flow in the exterior region: A supplementary example for Gearhart-Pr\"uss type lemma

TL;DR

This paper studies the decay behavior of 2D Taylor-Couette flow in exterior regions, showing polynomial decay and limitations of resolvent estimates, thus providing new insights into the stability of degenerate shear flows.

Contribution

It establishes space-time coupled polynomial decay for the linearized 2D Taylor-Couette flow in exterior regions and demonstrates the limitations of resolvent estimates and Gearhart-Prüss lemma in this context.

Findings

Linearized system exhibits polynomial decay in exterior regions.

Exponential decay cannot be expected for solutions with inhomogeneous terms.

Resolvent estimates may be ineffective for degenerate shear flows.

Abstract

From the perspective of asymptotic stability at high Reynolds numbers, Taylor-Couette flow, as a typical rotating shear flow, exhibits rich decay behaviors. Previously, for the extensively studied Couette flow or the Taylor-Couette flow in bounded annular domains, methods based on resolvent estimates could derive exponential decay asymptotic for the solutions of the linearized system. However, unlike the Couette flow or the Taylor-Couette flow in bounded annular domains, the Taylor-Couette flow in exterior regions exhibits degeneration of derivatives of any order at infinity. In this paper, we present in Theorem 1.1 that the linearized system of the 2D Taylor-Couette flow in the exterior region exhibits space-time coupled polynomial decay asymptotics. We also prove that the solution to this system, when it contains inhomogeneous terms, cannot be expected to exhibit space-time coupled exponential decay, as detailed in Theorem 1.2. The result of Theorem 1.2 indicates that, even if we can obtain sharp resolvent estimates in different weighted spaces, the Gearhart-Pr\"uss type lemma no longer applies. This suggests that resolvent estimates may not be very effective for handling degenerate shear flows. Furthermore, Theorem 1.2 also implies that, for the transition threshold problem of the 2D Taylor-Couette flow in exterior regions, we can at most expect the solution to exhibit long-time behavior with space-time coupled polynomial decay. Finally, we present a generalization of Theorem 1.2, as detailed in Theorem 1.3.