Stability and optimal decay for a system of 3D anisotropic Boussinesq equations

This paper focuses on a system of three-dimensional (3D) Boussinesq equations modeling anisotropic buoyancy-driven fluids. The goal here is to solve the stability and large-time behavior problem on perturbations near the hydrostatic balance, a prominent equilibrium in fluid dynamics, atmospherics and astrophysics. Due to the lack of the vertical kinematic dissipation and the horizontal thermal diffusion, this stability problem is difficult. When the spatial domain is $\Omega =R^2\times T$ with $T=[-1/2,1/2]$ being a 1D periodic box, this paper establishes the desired stability for fluids with certain symmetries. The approach here is to distinguish the vertical averages of the velocity and temperature from their corresponding oscillation parts. In addition, the oscillation parts are shown to decay exponentially to zero in time. (paper)