Asymptotic stability of the Kolmogorov flow at high Reynolds numbers

Abstract: In this paper we prove the asymptotic stability of the Kolmogorov flow on a non-square torus for perturbations $\omega_0$ satisfying $|\omega_0|_{H^3}\ll\nu^{1/3}$, where $0<\nu\ll1$ is the viscosity. Kolmogorov flows are important metastable states to the two dimensional incompressible Navier Stokes equations in the high Reynolds number regime. Our result shows that the perturbed solution will rapidly converge to a shear flow close to the Kolmogorov flow, before settling down to the Kolmogorov flow and slowly decaying to $0$ as $t\to\infty$. In fact, our analysis reveals several interesting time scales and rich dynamical behavior of the perturbation in the transition period $0<t\leq 1/\nu$. The threshold $\nu^{1/3}$, which is the same as that for the Couette flow, is quite surprising since one of the key stability mechanisms, enhanced dissipation, becomes considerably weaker in the case of Kolmogorov flows due to the presence of critical points. To overcome this essential new difficulty, we establish sharp vorticity depletion estimates near the critical points to obtain improved decay rates for the vorticity and velocity fields that are comparable with those for Couette flows, at least for our purposes. We then combine these estimates (enhanced dissipation, inviscid damping and vorticity depletion) with a quasilinear approximation scheme and a multiple-timescale analysis naturally adapted to the dynamics of the perturbation, to obtain the $\nu^{1/3}$ threshold for dynamic stability of Kolmogorov flows. The threshold is expected to be sharp when the perturbation is considered in Sobolev spaces. This appears to be the first result that applies vorticity depletion estimates to improve thresholds for nonlinear asymptotic stability in incompressible fluid equations.