2018/09/21 by Jukka Tuomela, María J. Martín, Tuomela, Jukka +1
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #13P10 #35Q31 #76B03 #Analysis of PDEs (math.AP) #Analytic and geometric function theory #FOS: Mathematics #Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1810.01475
openalex publication_date 2018/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
There are not too many known explicit solutions to the 2-dimensional incompressible Euler equations in Lagrangian coordinates. Special mention must be made of the well-known ones due Gerstner and Kirchhoff, which were already discovered in the 19th century. These two classical solutions share a common characteristic, namely, the dependence of the coordinates from the initial location is determined by a harmonic map, as recognized by Abrashkin and Yakubovich, who more recently -- in the 1980s -- obtained new explicit solutions with a similar feature. We present a more general method for constructing new explicit solutions in Lagrangian coordinates which contain as special cases all previously known ones. This new approach shows that in fact "harmonic labelings" are special cases of a much larger family. In the classical solutions, the matrix Lie groups were essential in describing the time evolution. We see that also the geodesics in these groups are important.