Global solutions of the two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a linearly growing mode in each direction

Abstract: In two spatial dimensions, there are very few global existence results for the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. The majority of the few results in the literature are strongly anisotropic, i.e. are results of thin-domain type. In the spatially periodic case, the dynamics of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation are in part governed by the size of the domain, as this determines how many linearly growing Fourier modes are present. The strongly anisotropic results allow linearly growing Fourier modes in only one of the spatial directions. We provide here the first proof of global solutions for the two-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a linearly growing mode in both spatial directions. We develop a new method to this end, categorizing wavenumbers as low (linearly growing modes), intermediate (linearly decaying modes which serve as energy sinks for the low modes), and high (strongly linearly decaying modes). The low and intermediate modes are controlled by means of a Lyapunov function, while the high modes are controlled with operator estimates in function spaces based on the Wiener algebra.