Nonlinear stability of the Larson-Penston collapse

Abstract: We prove nonlinear stability of the Larson-Penston family of self-similarly collapsing solutions to the isothermal Euler-Poisson system. Our result applies to radially symmetric perturbations and it is the first full nonlinear stability result for radially imploding compressible flows. At the heart of the proof is the ground state character of the Larson-Penston solution, which exhibits important global monotonicity properties used throughout the proof. One of the key challenges is the proof of mode-stability for the non self-adjoint spectral problem which arises when linearising the dynamics around the Larson-Penston collapsing solution. To exclude the presence of complex growing modes other than the trivial one associated with time translation symmetry, we use a high-order energy method in low and high frequency regimes, for which the monotonicity properties are crucially exploited, and use rigorous computer-assisted techniques in the intermediate regime. In addition, the maximal dissipativity of the linearised operator is proven on arbitrary large backward light cones emanating from the singular point using the global monotonicity of the Larson-Penston solutions. Such a flexibility in linear analysis also facilitates nonlinear analysis and allows us to identify the exact number of derivatives necessary for the nonlinear stability statement. The proof is based on a two-tier high-order weighted energy method which ties bounds derived from the Duhamel formula to quasilinear top order estimates. To prove global existence we further use the Brouwer fixed point theorem to identify the final collapse time, which suppresses the trivial instability caused by the time-translation symmetry of the system.