Nonlinear orbital stability for planar vortex patches

Abstract

In this paper, we prove nonlinear orbital stability for steady vortex patches that maximize the kinetic energy among isovortical rearrangements in a planar bounded domain. As a result, nonlinear stability for an isolated vortex patch is proved. The proof is based on conservation of energy and vorticity, which is an analogue of the classical Liapunov function method.