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Long-time asymptotics for two-dimensional exterior flows with small circulation at infinity

We consider the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in a two-dimensional exterior domain, with no-slip boundary conditions. We assume that the initial velocity is a finite-energy and L^q-summable perturbation of the Oseen vortex with circulation α, where 1 < q < 2. If α is sufficiently small, we show that the solution behaves asymptotically in time like the self-similar Oseen vortex with circulation α. This is a global stability result, which holds for arbitrarily large perturbations of the Oseen vortex, and our smallness assumption on the circulation is independent of the domain under consideration.