Stability of 2D steady Euler flows related to least energy solutions of the Lane-Emden equation

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate nonlinear stability of planar steady Euler flows related to least energy solutions of the Lane-Emden equation in a smooth bounded domain. We prove the orbital stability of these flows in terms of both the $L^s$ norm of the vorticity for any $s\in(1,+\infty)$ and the energy norm. As a consequence, nonlinear stability is obtained when the least energy solution is unique, which actually holds for a large class of domains and exponents. The proofs are based on a new variational characterization of least energy solutions in terms of the vorticity, a compactness argument, and proper use of conserved quantities of the Euler equation.