The supercooled Stefan problem: fractal freezing and the fine structure of maximal solutions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the supercooled Stefan problem across dimensions, revealing fractal freezing, irregularities, and stability of maximal solutions, with special cases showing universality and minimal nucleation consistent with physical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Markovian gluing principle, analyzes regularity of maximal solutions, and demonstrates universality in radial and 1D cases, advancing understanding of fractal freezing phenomena.

Findings

Generic solutions exhibit fractal freezing and nucleation.

Maximal solutions have a transition zone with regularity properties.

In radial and 1D cases, solutions are universal and minimize nucleation.

Abstract

We study the supercooled Stefan problem in arbitrary dimensions. First, we study general solutions and their irregularities, showing generic fractal freezing and nucleation, based on a novel Markovian gluing principle. In contrast, we then establish regularity properties of maximal solutions, which are obtained by maximizing a suitable notion of "average" freezing time. Unexpectedly, we show that maximal solutions have a transition zone that is open modulo a low-dimensional set: this allows us to apply obstacle problem theory for a finer regularity analysis. We further show that maximal solutions are in general non-universal, and we obtain sharp stability results under perturbation of each maximal solution. Lastly, we study maximal solutions in both the radial and the one-dimensional setting. We show that in these cases the maximal solution is universal and minimizes nucleation, in agreement with phenomena observed in the physics literature.