We develop a general energy method for proving the optimal time decay rates of the solutions to the dissipative equations in the whole space. Our method is applied to classical examples such as the heat equation, the compressible Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation. In particular, the optimal decay rates of the higher-order spatial derivatives of solutions are obtained. The negative Sobolev norms are shown to be preserved along time evolution and enhance the decay rates. We use a family of scaled energy estimates with minimum derivative counts and interpolations among them without linear decay analysis.

We consider the free boundary problem for two layers of immiscible, viscous, incompressible fluid in a uniform gravitational field, lying above a general rigid bottom in a threedimensional horizontally periodic setting. We establish the global well-posedness of the problem both with and without surface tension. We prove that without surface tension the solution decays to the equilibrium state at an almost exponential rate; with surface tension, we show that the solution decays at an exponential rate. Our results include the case in which a heavier fluid lies above a lighter one, provided that the surface tension at the free internal interface is above a critical value, which we identify. This means that sufficiently large surface tension stabilizes the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the nonlinear setting. As a part of our analysis, we establish elliptic estimates for the two-phase stationary Stokes problem.Notice that J = det ∇Θ is the Jacobian of the coordinate transformation. We also denote W = ∂ t Θ 3 K N = (−∂ 1 η, −∂ 2 η, 1)T i = e i + ∂ i ηe 3 for i = 1, 2 θ ij = ∂ j Θ i for i, j = 1, 2, 3.(1.23)

We consider a free boundary problem for the incompressible ideal magnetohydrodynamic equations that describes the motion of the plasma in vacuum. The magnetic field is tangent and the total pressure vanishes along the plasma-vacuum interface. Under the Taylor sign condition of the total pressure on the free surface, we prove the local well-posedness of the problem in Sobolev spaces.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 35L65, 35Q35, 76B03, 76W05.

This paper concerns the dynamics of two layers of compressible, barotropic, viscous fluid lying atop one another. The lower fluid is bounded below by a rigid bottom, and the upper fluid is bounded above by a trivial fluid of constant pressure. This is a free boundary problem: the interfaces between the fluids and above the upper fluid are free to move. The fluids are acted on by gravity in the bulk, and at the free interfaces we consider both the case of surface tension and the case of no surface forces. We establish a sharp nonlinear global-in-time stability criterion and give the explicit decay rates to the equilibrium. When the upper fluid is heavier than the lower fluid along the equilibrium interface, we characterize the set of surface tension values in which the equilibrium is nonlinearly stable. Remarkably, this set is non-empty, i.e. sufficiently large surface tension can prevent the onset of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. When the lower fluid is heavier than the upper fluid, we show that the equilibrium is stable for all non-negative surface tensions and we establish the zero surface tension limit.