English

Asymmetry of curl eigenfields solving Woltjer's variational problem

Mathematical Physics 2025-07-01 v2 Analysis of PDEs math.MP

Abstract

We construct families of rotationally symmetric toroidal domains in R3\mathbb R^3 for which the eigenfields associated to the first (positive) Amp\`erian curl eigenvalue are symmetric, and others for which no first eigenfield is symmetric. This implies, in particular, that minimizers of the celebrated Woltjer's variational principle do not need to inherit the rotational symmetry of the domain. This disproves the folk wisdom that the eigenfields corresponding to the lowest curl eigenvalue must be symmetric if the domain is.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.21243,
  title  = {Asymmetry of curl eigenfields solving Woltjer's variational problem},
  author = {Daniel Peralta-Salas and David Perrella and David Pfefferlé},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.21243},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

32 pages. Corrected typo in Theorem 1.1 and updated acknowledgements

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:34:29.238Z