SIGEST

Abstract

The SIGEST article in this issue, “Improbability of Collisions of Point-Vortices in Bounded Planar Domains,” by Martin Donati, is based on the 2022 SIAM Journal on Mathematics Analysis article “Two-Dimensional Point Vortex Dynamics in Bounded Domains: Global Existence for Almost Every Initial Data.” This work concerns point-vortex dynamics in a very general bounded domain in the plane. The main result is that the set of initial configurations which lead to finite-time collision, although nonempty, has Lebesgue measure zero. This is an elegant and highly nontrivial extension to general bounded domains with $C^{2, \alpha}$ boundary of a result previously known only for three domains: the full plane, a disk, and the complement of a disk. It is notable that the result also extends to point-vortex dynamics in multiply connected domains. In preparing this SIGEST version, the author has added a new introductory section that explains the context of the new results. Moreover, some of the technical details from the original article have been replaced by more accessible high-level explanations. Recent references on the topics of vortex collisions and desingularization problems are also included. This SIGEST article will be of particular interest to researchers in fluid mechanics, partial differential equations, and applied analysis.