Singular and regular analysis for the free boundaries of two-phase inviscid fluids in gravity field

TL;DR

This paper investigates the singularity and regularity of free surfaces in two-phase inviscid fluids under gravity, revealing symmetric Stokes singular profiles and conditions breaking symmetry at stagnation points.

Contribution

It extends the analysis of free boundary problems to two-phase fluids with gravity, identifying singular and regular behaviors near stagnation points and generalizing prior one-phase and non-gravity results.

Findings

Singular side exhibits symmetric Stokes profile near stagnation point.

Regular side maintains $C^{1,eta}$ regularity.

Interaction can break symmetry of the free surface profile.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a free boundary problem of two-phase inviscid incompressible fluid in gravity field. The presence of the gravity field induces novel phenomena that there might be some stagnation points on free surface of the two-phase flow, where the velocity field of the fluid vanishes. From the mathematical point of view, the gradient of the stream function degenerates near the stagnation point, leading to singular behaviors on the free surface. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the singularity and regularity of the two-phase free surface, considering their mutual interaction between the two incompressible fluids in two dimensions. More precisely, if the two fluids meet locally at a single point, referred to as the possible two-phase stagnation point, we demonstrate that the singular side of the two-phase free surface exhibits a symmetric Stokes singular profile, while the regular side near this point maintains the $C^{1,\alpha}$ regularity. On the other hand, if the free surfaces of the two fluids stick together and have non-trivial overlapping common boundary at the stagnation point, then the interaction between the two fluids will break the symmetry of the Stokes corner profile, which is attached to the $C^{1,\alpha}$ regular free surface on the other side. As a byproduct of our analysis, it's shown that the velocity field for the two fluids cannot vanish simultaneously on the two-phase free boundary. Our results generalize the significant works on the Stokes conjecture in [V$\check{a}$rv$\check{a}$ruc$\check{a}$-Weiss, Acta Math., 206, (2011)] for one-phase gravity water wave, and on regular results on the free boundaries in [De Philippis-Spolaor-Velichkov, Invent. Math., 225, (2021)] for two-phase fluids without gravity.