On bifurcation of self-similar solutions of the stationary Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract: Landau solutions are special solutions to the stationary incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the three dimensional space excluding the origin. They are self-similar and axisymmetric with no swirl. In fact, any self-similar smooth solution must be a Landau solution. In the effort of extending this result to the one for the solution class with the pointwise scale-invariant bound $|u(x)|\leq C_0|x|^{-1}$ for some $C_0>0$, we consider axisymmetric discretely self-similar solutions, and investigate the existence of such solution curve emanating from some Landau solution. We prove that the inclusion of the swirl component does not enhance the bifurcation and present numerical evidence of no bifurcation.