Jing Li

Abstract We establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the Cauchy problem for the isentropic compressible Navier‐Stokes equations in three spatial dimensions with smooth initial data that are of small energy but possibly large oscillations with constant state as far field, which could be either vacuum or nonvacuum. The initial density is allowed to vanish, and the spatial measure of the set of vacuum can be arbitrarily large; in particular, the initial density can even have compact support. These results generalize previous results on classical solutions for initial densities being strictly away from vacuum and are the first for global classical solutions that may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We extend the well-known Serrin's blowup criterion for the three-dimensional (3D) incompressible Navier–Stokes equations to the 3D viscous compressible cases. It is shown that for the Cauchy problem of the 3D compressible Navier–Stokes equations in the whole space, the strong or smooth solution exists globally if the velocity satisfies the Serrin's condition and either the supernorm of the density or the $L^1(0,T;L^\infty)$-norm of the divergence of the velocity is bounded. Furthermore, in the case that either the shear viscosity coefficient is suitably large or there is no vacuum, the Serrin's condition on the velocity can be removed in this criterion.