title: On Kelvin-Stuart vortices in a viscous fluid.
abstract: When one contemplates the one-parameter family of steady inviscid shear flows discovered by J. T. Stuart in 1967, an obvious thought is that these flows resemble a row of vortices diffusing in a viscous fluid, with the parameter playing the role of a reversed time. In this paper, we ask how close this resemblance is. Accordingly, the paper begins to explore Navier-Stokes solutions having as initial condition the classical, irrotational flow due to a row of point vortices. However, since we seek explicit answers, such exploration seems possible only in two relatively easy cases: that of small time and arbitrary Reynolds number and that of small Reynolds number and arbitrary time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. L.E.Fraenkel@bath.ac.uk
authors.forename: L E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Fraenkel