The Lie-Poisson structure of the LAE-\(\alpha\) equation (Q816285)

Fluid dynamics, and in general dynamics for continuum media, can be formulated on the diffeomorphism groups of considered systems, besides some suitable constraint conditions. This point of view requires to work on infinite dimensional manifolds, and to use techniques of global analysis adapted to this context. It extends the point of view of classical mechanics of finite degree of freedom to an infinite dimensional framework. Technically it is functional analysis on infinite dimensional manifolds. This approach has been systematically followed just from the beginning of the last century by many authors, (see, e.g. Abraham, Arnold, De Witt, Choquet-Bruhat, Ebin, Marsden, Palais,...), and has obtained important characterizations of equations describing fluid dynamics. This paper is just placed in this context. The authors consider the so-called LAE-\(\alpha\) equation, (Lagrangian average Euler-\(\alpha\) equation), that is a variation of the Euler equation rewritten on the group of diffeomorphisms for inviscid incompressible fluids. It is directly related to some previous works by Marsden and coworkers, that proved that in appropriate Sobolev spaces, the Euler equations are spatial representations of a geodesic spray that coincides with the dynamics of such a fluid in material representation, and that this geodesic spray is a smooth vector field on the group of volume preserving diffeomorphisms. Marsden and coworkers have given also the Hamiltonian formulation of the Euler equation in that framework. The aim of the present paper is to carry out the previously considered results, and to characterize the Lie-Poisson structure of another equation under focus in fluid dynamics, i.e., the LAE-\(\alpha\) equation. It is known that these equations either on boundaryless manifolds, or with Dirichlet boundary conditions, have some remarkable property in Lagrangian formulation to be smooth geodesic sprays of \(H^1\)-like Riemannian metrics on diffeomorphism groups. The authors emphasize that their interest for the LAE-\(\alpha\) equation arises from the fact that this equation presents some particular technical problems, (derivative loss in the formulation of their Lie-Poisson structure, and canonicalicity of the flow). The main result is to have proved that the geodesic spray for Neumann (or free-slip) and mixed boundary conditions, is also smooth. A non-smooth Lie-Poisson reduction for the averages Euler equation with mixed boundary conditions is also obtained. The paper is divided into six sections. After a first detailed introduction (section 1), it considers the geometry of the LAE-\(\alpha\) equation as previously introduced in the literature (section 2). Section 3 gives the formula of the geodesic spray and connection of the weak Riemannian metric on the volume-preserving diffeomorphism group. Section 4 builds the Lie-Poisson structure for the LAE\(\alpha\) equation. Section 5 studies some boundary properties of the flow of LAE\(\alpha\). Section~6 generalizes the results of the previous sections to the case of free-slip and mixed boundary conditions. Remark. Let us remark that in the framework considered in this paper it is usual to work in Sobolev-like spaces of functions. However, in order to describe very sophisticated solutions, occuring in fluid dynamics, Sobolev spaces appear to be not enough. In general solutions cannot be described by means of diffeomorphism groups. More sophisticated mathematical structures are required, as can be met in differential topology. (See e.g., the excellent and well-known book by \textit{M. W. Hirsch} [Differential Topology, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (1986; Zbl 0356.57001)]. These phenomena can be, now, well controlled in a geometric theory of PDE's, where these structures are described by means of jet-spaces. (See recent papers by the reviewer of this paper.)