On the conservation of helicity by weak solutions of the 3D Euler and inviscid MHD equations

Abstract

Classical solutions of the three-dimensional Euler equations of an ideal incompressible fluid conserve the helicity. We introduce a new weak formulation of the vorticity formulation of the Euler equations in which (by implementing the Bony paradifferential calculus) the advection terms are interpreted as paraproducts for weak solutions with low regularity. Using this approach we establish an equation of local helicity balance, which gives a rigorous foundation to the concept of local helicity density and flux at low regularity. We provide a sufficient criterion for helicity conservation which is weaker than many of the existing sufficient criteria for helicity conservation in the literature.

Subsequently, we prove a sufficient condition for the helicity to be conserved in the zero viscosity limit of the Navier–Stokes equations. Moreover, we establish a relation between the defect measure (which is part of the local helicity balance) and a third-order structure function for solutions of the Euler equations. As a byproduct of the approach introduced in this paper, we also obtain a new sufficient condition for the conservation of magnetic helicity in the inviscid MHD equations, as well as for the kinematic dynamo model.

Finally, it is known that classical solutions of the ideal (inviscid) MHD equations which have divergence-free initial data will remain divergence-free, but this need not hold for weak solutions. We show that weak solutions of the ideal MHD equations arising as weak-$\ast$ limits of Leray–Hopf weak solutions of the viscous and resistive MHD equations remain divergence-free in time.