On the Long-time Dynamics and Ergodicity of the Stochastic Nernst-Planck-Navier-Stokes System

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the long-term behavior and ergodic properties of a stochastic electrodiffusion model coupling ionic transport with fluid dynamics, establishing existence, uniqueness, and ergodicity of solutions under various conditions.

Contribution

It provides the first rigorous analysis of global solutions and ergodic measures for the stochastic Nernst-Planck-Navier-Stokes system with detailed conditions for uniqueness and exponential convergence.

Findings

Existence and uniqueness of global solutions on bounded domains.

Existence of invariant ergodic measures under certain conditions.

Exponential ergodicity for specific ionic species configurations.

Abstract

We consider an electrodiffusion model that describes the intricate interplay of multiple ionic species with a two-dimensional, incompressible, viscous fluid subjected to stochastic additive noise. This system involves nonlocal nonlinear drift-diffusion Nernst-Planck equations for ionic species and stochastic Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion under the influence of electric and time-independent forces. Under the selective boundary conditions imposed on the concentrations, we establish the existence and uniqueness of global pathwise solutions to this system on smooth bounded domains. Our study also investigates long-time ionic concentration dynamics and explores Feller properties of the associated Markovian semigroup. In the context of equal diffusive species and under appropriate conditions, we demonstrate the existence of invariant ergodic measures supported on $H^2$. We then enhance the ergodicity results on periodic tori and obtain smooth invariant measures under a constraint on the initial spatial averages of the concentrations. The uniqueness of the invariant measures on periodic boxes and smooth bounded domains is further established when the noise forces sufficient modes, and the diffusivities of the species are large. Finally, in the case of two ionic species with equal diffusivities and valences of $1$ and $-1$, we study the rate of convergence of the Markov transition kernels to the invariant measure and obtain unconditional, unique exponential ergodicity for the model.