Local existence and uniqueness of Prandtl equations

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Tak Kwong Wong , University of Pennsylvania
Fine Hall 314

The Prandtl equations, which describe the boundary layer behavior of a viscous incompressible fluid near the physical wall, play an important role in the zero-viscosity limit of Navier-Stokes equations. In this talk we will discuss the local-in-time existence and uniqueness for the Prandtl equations in weighted Sobolev spaces under the Oleinik's monotonicity assumption. The proof is based on weighted energy estimates, which come from a new type of nonlinear cancellations between velocity and vorticity.