Metastability of the Nonlinear Wave Equation: Insights from Transition State Theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the long-time behavior of the nonlinear wave equation in one dimension, demonstrating metastability and transition dynamics between phase-space regions using Transition State Theory, with implications for ergodicity and mixing times.

Contribution

It applies Transition State Theory to quantify metastable transitions in the nonlinear wave equation, linking deterministic PDE dynamics with stochastic-like metastability analysis.

Findings

Metastable behavior observed in solutions with double-welled potential.

Transition rates between metastable sets can be exactly computed using TST.

Ergodicity and rapid mixing occur for small elta, but break down for larger elta.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the long-time dynamics of the nonlinear wave equation in one-space dimension, $$ u_{tt} - \delta^2 u_{xx} +V'(u) =0 \qquad x\in [0,1] $$ where $\delta>0$ is a parameter and $V(u)$ is a potential bounded from below and growing at least like $u^2$ as $|u|\to\infty$. Infinite energy solutions of this equation preserve a natural Gibbsian invariant measure and when the potential is double-welled, for example when $V(u) = \tfrac14(1-u^2)^2$, there is a regime such that two small disjoint sets in the system's phase-space concentrate most of the mass of this measure. This suggests that the solutions to the nonlinear wave equation can be metastable over these sets, in the sense that they spend long periods of time in these sets and only rarely transition between them. Here we quantify this phenomenon by calculating exactly via Transition State Theory (TST) the mean frequency at which the solutions of the nonlinear wave equation with initial conditions drawn from its invariant measure cross a dividing surface lying in between the metastable sets. Numerical results suggest that the dynamics of the nonlinear wave equation is ergodic and rapidly mixing with respect to the Gibbs invariant measure when the parameter $\delta$ in small enough. This is a regime in which the dynamics of the nonlinear wave equation displays a metastable behavior that is not fundamentally different from that observed in its stochastic counterpart in which random noise and damping terms are added to the equation. For larger $\delta$, however, the dynamics either stops being ergodic, or its mixing time becomes larger than the inverse of the TST frequency, indicating that successive transitions between the metastable sets are correlated and the coarse-graining to a Markov chain fails.