We establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the Cauchy problem for the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in three spatial dimensions with smooth initial data which are of small energy but possibly large oscillations with constant state as far field which could be either vacuum or non-vacuum. The initial density is allowed to vanish and the spatial measure of the set of vacuum can be arbitrarily large, in particular, the initial density can even have compact support. These results generalize previous results on classical solutions for initial densities being strictly away from vacuum, and are the first for global classical solutions which may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states.

We extend the well-known Serrin's blowup criterion for the three-dimensional (3D) incompressible Navier-Stokes equations to the 3D viscous compressible cases. It is shown that for the Cauchy problem of the 3D compressible Navier-Stokes system in the whole space, the strong or smooth solution exists globally if the velocity satisfies the Serrin's condition and either the supernorm of the density or the L 1 (0, T ; L ∞ )-norm of the divergence of the velocity is bounded. Furthermore, in the case that either the shear viscosity coefficient is suitably large or there is no vacuum, the Serrin's condition on the velocity can be removed in this criteria.

We prove that the maximum norm of the deformation tensor of velocity gradients controls the possible breakdown of smooth(strong) solutions for the 3-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations, which will happen, for example, if the initial density is compactly supported [33]. More precisely, if a solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations is initially regular and loses its regularity at some later time, then the loss of regularity implies the growth without bound of the deformation tensor as the critical time approaches. Our result is the same as Ponce's criterion for 3-dimensional incompressible Euler equations ( [26]). Moreover, our method can be generalized to the full Compressible Navier-Stokes system which improve the previous results. In addition, initial vacuum states are allowed in our cases.

We establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the three-dimensional full compressible Navier-Stokes system with smooth initial data which are of small energy but possibly large oscillations where the initial density is allowed to vanish. Moreover, for the initial data, which may be discontinuous and contain vacuum states, we also obtain the global existence of weak solutions. These results generalize previous ones on classical and weak solutions for initial density being strictly away from vacuum, and are the first for global classical and weak solutions which may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states. *