Quasipotential and exit time for 2D stochastic Navier-Stokes equations driven by space time white noise (Q495559)

The authors consider a 2-dimensional stochastic Navier-Stokes equation in a regular bounded open domain perturbed by a small Gaussian noise \(\omega ^{Q_\delta}\) for \(\delta>0\), white in time and colored in space. For any \(\delta\), \(Q_\delta\) is a positive linear operator. The aim of the paper is to describe the small noise asymptotics of this case. It is assumed that when \(\delta \to 0\), the noise converges to the white noise in space and time. For every \(\delta >0\), the family of solutions satisfies a large deviations principle with action functional \(S_T^\delta\) and the corresponding quasi-potential \(U_\delta\). The authors prove that, when \(\delta\) goes to zero, then \(U_\delta\) converges to \(U\), with the action functional \(S_T^\delta\) replaced by \(S_T\) (corresponding to the case \(Q^0=I\)), in spite of the fact that the Navier-Stokes equation has no meaning in the space of square integrable functions. Moreover, in the case of the stochastic Navier-Stokes equations with periodic boundary conditions, \(U\) is computed explicitly. In the second part of the paper, the expected exit time of the solution from a determined domain is studied. More precisely, the expectation of the exit time can be explained in terms of the quasi-potential.