Global well-posedness of unsteady motion of viscous incompressible capillary liquid bounded by a free surface

Abstract

In this paper, we prove the global well-posedness of free boundary problems of the Navier-Stokes equations in a bounded domain with surface tension. The velocity field is obtained in the $L_p$ in time $L_q$ in space maximal regularity class, ($2 < p < ∞$, $N < q < ∞$, and $2/p + N/q < 1$), under the assumption that the initial domain is close to a ball and initial data are sufficiently small. The essential point of our approach is to drive the exponential decay theorem in the $L_p$-$L_q$ framework for the linearized equations with the help of maximal $L_p$-$L_q$ regularity theory for the Stokes equations with free boundary conditions and spectral analysis of the Stokes operator and the Laplace-Beltrami operator.