On Global-in-time Solutions of Incompressible MHD Equations with Small Alfvén Numbers

Abstract

In 1965 Kraichnan pointed out that a sufficiently strong background magnetic field, i.e. the case of small Alfvén number, will reduce the nonlinear interaction and inhibit the formation of strong gradients in the magnetohydrodynamic (abbr. MHD) system with $μ=ν\geqslant 0$, where $μ$ and $ν$ are the coefficients of kinematic viscosity and resistivity resp.. This means that the MHD system with $μ=ν\geqslant 0$ admits global-in-time large perturbation solutions with small Alfvén numbers. The existence of such large perturbation solutions was first mathematically verified in Hölder spaces by Bardos--Sulem--Sulem for the case $μ=ν= 0$ in 1988, and in Sobolev spaces by Cai--Cui--Jiang--Liu for the case $μ=ν> 0$ recently. In this paper, we further found a similar result for the general case ``$μ>0$ and $ν>0$", and provide a rigorous proof by developing a new approach, which includes a key bilinear estimate for dealing with the nonlinear interaction terms. Moreover both additional results for the vanishing behavior of the nonlinear interaction and the small Alfvén number limit of solutions are also established.