Strong ill-posedness for the MHD system in the supercritical regime: inviscid and viscous

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the Cauchy problem for the 3D incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations in supercritical Sobolev spaces. It is well known that the system is locally well-posed in subcritical Sobolev spaces, whereas the supercritical regime remains largely open. In this work, we establish norm inflation for the incompressible MHD equations, both with and without Laplacian dissipation, in supercritical Sobolev spaces, thereby revealing strong ill-posedness of the system at this regularity level. A distinctive feature of our approach is the introduction of a novel geometric construction, termed the ``Magnetic-solo ansatz'', through which, for the ideal MHD system, norm inflation occurs exclusively in the magnetic field $b$ in $H^s$ with $0<s<\frac{5}{2}$, while the $H^s$-norm of the velocity field $u$ remains uniformly bounded. This asymmetric behavior shows that supercritical ill-posedness can be driven exclusively by the magnetic field, highlighting its essential role in the breakdown of well-posedness. Our findings fill a significant gap in the supercritical regularity theory for incompressible MHD and shed light on the distinct mechanisms governing the fluid and magnetic dynamics.