Localization of Beltrami fields: Global smooth solutions and vortex reconnection for the Navier-Stokes equations

We introduce a class of divergence-free vector fields on $R^3$ obtained after a suitable localization of Beltrami fields. First, we use them as initial data to construct unique global smooth solutions of the three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The relevant fact here is that these initial data can be chosen to be large in any critical space for the Navier–Stokes problem, however they satisfy the nonlinear smallness assumption introduced in [10]. As a further application of the method, we use these vector fields to provide analytical example of vortex-reconnection for the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations on $R^3$. To do so, we exploit the ideas developed in [13] but differently from this latter we cannot rely on the non-trivial homotopy of the three-dimensional torus. To overcome this obstacle we use a different topological invariant, i.e. the number of hyperbolic zeros of the vorticity field.