Arnold stability and Misiołek curvature

Abstract

Let M be a compact 2-dimensional Riemannian manifold with smooth boundary and consider the incompressible Euler equation on M. In the case that M is the straight periodic channel, the annulus or the disc with the Euclidean metric, it was proved by T. D. Drivas, G. Misiołek, B. Shi, and the second author that all Arnold stable solutions have no conjugate point on the volume-preserving diffeomorphism group $${{\mathcal {D}}}_{\mu }^{s}(M)$$ . They also proposed a question which asks whether this is true or not for any M. In this article, we give a partial positive answer. More precisely, we show that the Misiołek curvature of any Arnold stable solution is nonpositive. The positivity of the Misiołek curvature is a sufficient condition for the existence of a conjugate point.