Special Session 128: New Trends in Mathematical Fluid Dynamics and Related Problems

Leapfrogging motion for the Euler equations. Part 2
Zineb Hassainia
University of Granada
Spain
Co-Author(s):    Claudia Garc\`ia and Taoufik Hmidi
Abstract:
In this talk, we present a rigorous construction of time-periodic leapfrogging vortex rings for the three-dimensional incompressible Euler equations. More precisely, we prove the existence of solutions in which two coaxial vortex rings periodically exchange positions, as observed in experiments and numerical simulations. The construction relies on a desingularization of two interacting vortex filaments within the contour dynamics formulation, leading to a Hamiltonian description of nearly concentric vortex rings. A central difficulty arises from a singular small-divisor problem in the linearized dynamics, where the effective time scale degenerates with the ring thickness parameter. We overcome this issue by combining a degenerate KAM-type analysis with pseudo-differential techniques and a Nash-Moser iteration scheme. This approach yields families of nontrivial time-periodic solutions in an almost uniformly translating frame and thereby provides a rigorous mathematical construction of classical leapfrogging motion for axisymmetric Euler flows without swirl, with no restriction on the time interval of existence.