Determining Modes, State Reconstruction, and Intertwinement: Existence of Self-Synchronizing Intertwinements

TL;DR

This paper explores the existence of specific self-synchronizing couplings, called intertwinements, in the 2D Navier-Stokes equations, linking determining modes and data assimilation with new classes of well-posed, synchronized systems.

Contribution

It identifies two non-trivial classes of intertwinements that are globally well-posed and can self-synchronize, extending the framework to nonlinear perturbations of the Navier-Stokes system.

Findings

Existence of two classes of globally well-posed intertwinements.

Conditions for these intertwinements to self-synchronize.

Extension of the framework to nonlinear perturbations.

Abstract

In the companion paper of the authors, a general synchronization framework was developed in the paradigmatic context of the 2D Navier-Stokes equations that allows one to precisely study the relation between the determining modes property of the corresponding dynamical system and the ability of certain continuous data assimilation algorithms to reconstruct unobserved state variables from sufficiently many observed state variables in this system, i.e., the reconstruction property. In this framework, the determining modes property and the reconstruction property can be viewed in a unified way as the ability of certain couplings of the Navier-Stokes equations to self-synchronize; due to the bi-directionality of coupling, the coupled system is referred to as an "intertwinement." A central achievement of this framework is to deduce a conceptual equivalence between the determining modes property and the reconstruction property of continuous data assimilation algorithms. In this paper, we prove that there are at least two non-trivial classes of intertwinements to which this framework applies. Moreover, these intertwinements encompass the continuous data assimilation algorithms studied in (Olson, Titi 2003) and (Azouani, Olson, Titi 2014) as special cases. Specifically, we show that there exist two types of intertwinements that are globally well-posed and we identify conditions under which these intertwinements self-synchronize. We emphasize that the intertwinements studied here can be induced by nonlinear perturbations of the underlying system, which are subsequently coupled bi-directionally to a copy of itself. Thus, establishing global well-posedness and suitable global-in-time uniform bounds, which are crucial to proving the claimed synchronization phenomenon, requires careful consideration.