Global Solutions of a Surface Quasi-Geostrophic Front Equation

Abstract: We consider a nonlinear, spatially-nonlocal initial value problem in one space dimension on $\mathbb{R}$ that describes the motion of surface quasi-geostrophic (SQG) fronts. We prove that the initial value problem has a unique local smooth solution under a convergence condition on the multilinear expansion of the nonlinear term in the equation, and, for sufficiently smooth and small initial data, we prove that the solution is global.