On radial symmetry of rotating vortex patches in the disc

Abstract

In this note, we consider the radial symmetry property of rotating vortex patches for the 2D incompressible Euler equations in the unit disc. By choosing a suitable vector field to deform the patch, we show that each simply-connected rotating vortex patch $D$ with angular velocity $\Omega$, $\Omega \ge \max \{1/2,(2l^2)/(1-l^2{)}^2\}$ or $\Omega \le -(2l^2)/(1-l^2{)}^2$, where $l={\sup }_{x\in D}|x|$, must be a disc. The main idea of the proof, which has a variational flavor, comes from a very recent paper of Gómez-Serrano--Park--Shi--Yao, arXiv:1908.01722, where radial symmetry of rotating vortex patches in the whole plane was studied.