Inertial manifolds (Q923456)

Inertial manifolds are new objects that have been recently introduced to the study of the long-term behavior of solutions of dissipative evolution equations. When they exist, inertial manifolds are finite dimensional invariant smooth manifolds that contain the global attractor and attract all the orbits at an exponential rate. Most of the dynamics for the system under consideration takes place on this manifold, producing a considerable simplification in the study of the dynamics. Also, the system obtained by restriction to the inertial manifold is a finite dimensional system, even if the initial system was infinite dimensional. This system, called the inertial system, reproduces most of the dynamical properties of the initial system. In addition to their mathematical significance, inertial manifolds may have some computational and physical relevance. As is shown below, inertial manifolds produce an interaction law between the small and large wavelength components of a flow; alternatively, using a terminology now common in the physics literature, we can say that the small wavelengths are enslaved by the large ones. This will be discussed in more detail below; we shall also relate inertial manifolds to slow manifolds, which are well known in meteorology for short-term weather forecasting. From the computational point of view, inertial manifolds and approximate inertial manifolds produce finite dimensional objects that approximate the attractor (perhaps a fractal set). They reproduce the coarse structure of the attractor that we want to approximate, while they neglect the fine details. Simple approximate inertial manifolds have been constructed and, although this is still very recent, promising numerical algorithms have been derived using these manifolds. This too will be briefly discussed.