On instability of Rayleigh–Taylor problem for incompressible liquid crystals under L 1 $L^{1}$ -norm

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the nonlinear Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability of a nonhomogeneous incompressible nematic liquid crystal in the presence of a uniform gravitational field. We first analyze the linearized equations around the steady state solution. Thus we construct solutions of the linearized problem that grow in time in the Sobolev space H 4 $H^{4}$ , then we show that the RT equilibrium state is linearly unstable. With the help of the established unstable solutions of the linearized problem and error estimates between the linear and nonlinear solutions, we establish the nonlinear instability of the density, the horizontal and vertical velocities under L 1 $L^{1}$ -norm.

Keywords

• Rayleigh–Taylor instability
• Liquid crystals
• Steady state solution