Koopman spectra in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces

TL;DR

This paper develops methods to identify Koopman eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions from time series data of complex dynamical systems using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, improving spectral estimation accuracy.

Contribution

It provides necessary and sufficient conditions for extending Fourier functions to Koopman eigenfunctions in RKHS, enhancing spectral analysis of systems with dense or continuous spectra.

Findings

RKHS norm criterion determines eigenfunction extendibility

Method outperforms traditional Fourier-based spectral estimation

Effective on systems with mixed spectra and weak periodic components

Abstract

Every invertible, measure-preserving dynamical system induces a Koopman operator, which is a linear, unitary evolution operator acting on the $L^2$ space of observables associated with the invariant measure. Koopman eigenfunctions represent the quasiperiodic, or non-mixing, component of the dynamics. The extraction of these eigenfunctions and their associated eigenfrequencies from a given time series is a non-trivial problem when the underlying system has a dense point spectrum, or a continuous spectrum behaving similarly to noise. This paper describes methods for identifying Koopman eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions from a discretely sampled time series generated by such a system with unknown dynamics. Our main result gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a Fourier function, defined on $N$ states sampled along an orbit of the dynamics, to be extensible to a Koopman eigenfunction on the whole state space, lying in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). In particular, we show that such an extension exists if and only if the RKHS norm of the Fourier function does not diverge as $ N \to \infty $, in which case the corresponding Fourier frequency is also a Koopman eigenfrequency. If such an RKHS extension does not exist, we can still construct an $L^2$ approximation of the eigenfunction. Numerical experiments on mixed-spectrum systems with weak periodic components demonstrate that this approach has significantly higher skill in identifying Koopman eigenfrequencies compared to conventional spectral estimation techniques based on the discrete Fourier transform.