Linear stability analysis for 2D shear flows near Couette in the isentropic Compressible Euler equations

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate linear stability properties of the 2D isentropic compressible Euler equations linearized around a shear flow given by a monotone profile, close to the Couette flow, with constant density, in the domain $\mathbb{T}\times \mathbb{R}$. We begin by directly investigating the Couette shear flow, where we characterize the linear growth of the compressible part of the fluid while proving time decay for the incompressible part (inviscid damping with slower rates). Then we extend the analysis to monotone shear flows near Couette, where we are able to give an upper bound, superlinear in time, for the compressible part of the fluid. The incompressible part enjoys an inviscid damping property, analogous to the Couette case. In the pure Couette case, we exploit the presence of an additional conservation law (which connects the vorticity and the density on the moving frame) in order to reduce the number of degrees of freedom of the system. The result then follows by using weighted energy estimates. In the general case, unfortunately, this conservation law no longer holds. Therefore we define a suitable weighted energy functional for the whole system, which can be used to estimate the irrotational component of the velocity but does not provide sharp bounds on the solenoidal component. However, even in the absence of the aforementioned additional conservation law, we are still able to show the existence of a functional relation which allows us to recover somehow the vorticity from the density, on the moving frame. By combining the weighted energy estimates with the functional relation we also recover the inviscid damping for the solenoidal component of the velocity.