Well-Posedness and Rayleigh–Taylor Instability of the Two-Phase Periodic Quasistationary Stokes Flow

Abstract We study the two-phase, horizontally periodic, quasistationary Stokes flow in two dimensions driven by surface tension and gravity effects in the general context of fluids with (possibly) different viscosities and densities. The sharp interface which separates the fluids is assumed to be the graph of a periodic function. The mathematical model is then recast as a fully nonlinear and nonlocal evolution equation involving only the function parametrizing the interface. Our main results include well-posedness and a parabolic smoothing property, as well as a study of equilibrium solutions in subcritical Sobolev spaces. In particular, we establish the Rayleigh–Taylor instability of small, finger-shaped equilibria and prove that the stability properties of flat interfaces depend on the sign of a certain parameter.