A priori Estimates for the Compressible Euler Equations for a Liquid with Free Surface Boundary and the Incompressible Limit

In this paper, we prove a new type of energy estimates for the compressible Euler's equation with free boundary, with a boundary part and an interior part. These can be thought of as a generalization of the energies in Christodoulou and Lindblad [CL] to the compressible case and do not require the fluid to be irrotational. In addition, we show that our estimates are in fact uniform in the sound speed. As a consequence, we obtain convergence of solutions of compressible Euler equations with a free boundary to solutions of the incompressible equations, generalizing the result of Ebin [Eb] to when you have a free boundary. In the incompressible case our energies reduces to those in [CL] and our proof in particular gives a simplified proof of the estimates in [CL] with improved error estimates. Since for an incompressible irrotational liquid with free surface there are small data global existence results our result leaves open the possibility of long time existence also for slightly compressible liquids with a free surface.