IAS Workshop on Symplectic Dynamics 2: Tuesday
Tuesday: 2012-03-13
- 9:00 - 10:00 Laszlo Szekelyhidi, University of Leipzig, “The h-principle for the Euler equations” abstract
- 10:15 - 11:15 Camilo de Lellis, University of Zurich, “The h-principle for the Euler equations Part 2” abstract
- 11:30 - 12:30 Vladimir Sverak, University of Minnesota, “On the long-time dynamics of some infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems” abstract
- 2:30 - 3:30 Antoine Choffrut, University of Leipzig, “On the local structure of the set of stationary flows to the 2D incompressible Euler equations” abstract
- 4:30 - 5:30 Thomas Kappeler, University of Zurich, “Symplectic techniques for integrable PDEs” abstract
Laszlo Szekelyhidi: The h-principle for the Euler equations

(chalk talk; joint work w. Camillo De Lellis)
“What I will speak about has nothing to do with symplectic and nothing to do with dynamics.” Hofer: very good.
Euler
The spatial dimension
Why look at weak solutions? The equations tell you conservation of mass and momentum. The derivation is done from a continuum analysis so this formulation is natural. For
Eyink, Constantin-E-Titi solved the
Spencer: Uniqueness in that range? Answer: No you need Lipschitz to see uniqueness so there remains a big gap.
Studying weak solutions puts us ina different framework than the study of smooth solutions, long time behavior for 2D,etc. This is a different world.
Theorem (Scheffer-Shnirelman): There exists a nontrivial weak solution with compact support in time.
This solution can be thought of as having initial data zero, then it is not zero and after a while, it is zero again. (This solution is far from regularity
h-principle (Gromov)
This theorem can be viewed as a statement of the form of the h-principle. This principle should be viewed as a different tpe of statement related to Hadamard ill-posedness.Theorem (Nash-Kuiper): Any strictly short smooth embedding of (compact)
For a geometer, this is viewed as a completely wrong theorem. It seemingly contradicts the classical rigidity of the 2-sphere. Any isometric embedding of the 2-sphere into
Berti: What is short? Answer: Distances in the image are shorter than distances in the domain. So, Lipschitz with constant less than 1.
Two conditions: A topological global condition, an embedding. A local condition, isometric.
- global: embedding
- local: isometric
An idea of the proof of this statement (Nash):
$$| u - \tilde{u} |1 \thicksim | a |0 \thicksim | g - \nabla u^T \nabla u |_0^{1/2}.$$
Lipschitz isometries
Kirchlein Baire Category Method.
Consider the space
Mather: What is Baire-1? Answer: It is a pointwise limit of continuous maps.
A corollary of Baire Category theorem. The points of continuity is dense. Despite the troubles with the corrugation possibility, most maps in this space are points of continuity. The only places where you can’t improve is where the gradient is already maximizing. As a consequence, most maps in this space are isometric.
This is an argument which can be generalized quite a bit and can be applied to the Euler equations.
Example. The original system (O). (Tartar-DiPerna ideas)
and we want to move to same relaxed condition (R) but with
Question: What is the set
Klainerman: what is the “h”? Answer: In this setting “h” stands for homotopy but that is not so present in this discussion. My view of the weak version of the h-principle is that there are a lot of solutions which have less regularity. De Lellis: Gromov woud say that you can take your short map and homotopize it while maintaining that it is an isometry, except at the endpoint.
Application to Euler
Now, you can write the Euler equations in this form by renaming the nonlinearity as a new variable. He shows how to do this by renaming some variables, interprets the associatedTheorem (DL-Sz): Let
This is the “local part” of the h-principle. Given one subsolution, I can construct a solution by adding these waves. More or less, what Scheffer-Shnirelman have done is to take 0 as the subsolution.
….I am very much running out of time….so just to state one more theorem which touches the initial data.
Admissibility. Those weak solutions for which the
Theorem: Let
He draws the interface with a thickened interface of some growing-with-time size outside of which we have the share flow.
Among all the selection criteria you might be considering for restoring uniqueness among the weak solutions, you could ask for maximally dissipating, you could choose the shear flow itself. Or you could ask for the one which has the fastest interface thickening. It is not yet clear which is the physically relevant selection critereon.
Questions:
Sverak: If you take a sequence of smooth solutions onverging to your data, is there any relation to your solution? Answer: It depends how it converges. Sverak: The best you can with continuous. Answer: I’m not sure.
Camilo de Lellis: The h-principle for the Euler equations Part 2
(continuation of previous talk; chalk talk)I’ll start by mentioning some related results in the literature.
Survey article: D-Sz posted on web in 2011 contains all this literature.
- Wiedeman: Global existence of weak solutions for any
initial data in . This would have been a fantastic theorem if it had not been too many solutions. This is the global analog of what was outlined before. Kappeler: ARe they adminssible? Answer: No. We are not anywhere near the blowup problem. - Sz-Wiedemann: You can approximate any measure-valued solutions (a la DiPerna-Majda) with exact solutions.
- Sz-Wiedemann: The set of “bad” initial data is
-dense.
- Incompressible porous medium equations. Some class of active scalar equations. Caddoba-Faoco-Grancedo, Shydkoy, Sz.
- Compressible Euler. D-Sz, Chiararoli, Chiadaroli-D. (Higher dimensional conservation laws have a striking nonuniqueness, contrast with the entropy conditions in 1d)
Theorem (D-Sz 2011): For any given
We are moving towards the lower part of the conjecture of Onsager. I can’t claim this is saying anything about turbulence, but it does speak to the issues of dynamics of solutions viewed on Fourier coefficients.
Remark: It seems we can reach some Holder regularity, something explicit like
Shnirelman: Can you say something about modulus of regularity about this solution? Answer: You can work out something. It would be painful to work out. Finding a Holder exponent is achieved through an iteration process.
The process uses smoothness properties of
….change gears.
Borisov ‘50: If
This gives you rigidity. This is a local theorem. The global theorem would say that the sphere has an isometric rigidity. Borisov also had an announcement…..never published his proof.
Borisov (1965—>2004): h-principle for 2d analytic surfaces in
Conti; D-Sz: Rigidity and h-principle in general dimension (with better exponenets). For 2d the exponent is
He describes a double iteration scheme. He emphasizes that the parameter
There are always successive one dimensional layers in any convex integration, in any h-principle appliation. To improve these constructions and obtain the
…slowing down on typing….I’m just going to watch this.
Vladimir Sverak: On the long-time dynamics of some infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems

2 main examples
- $w_t + u \nabla w =0, ~ w = \curl u, \nabla \cdot u = 0, x \in T^2
Speculative picutre in Fourier space.
There is an interesting possibilty that on the macroscopc scale the dynamics might be simpler than in finite dimensional cases. Why? If you look at the dynamics on the Fourier space, at time
Let’s look at defocusing
- Energy
- Momentum
- Mass
The most optimisitic scenario for the transfer to high frequencies is that for a generic solution over a long period of time, the solution will spend most of its time (in some weak topology) near this manifold of minimizers of
The variational principle may be viewed from the statistical mechanics point of view. Consider a finite-d truncation via Dirichlet prjection. If we believe in stat mech in this scenario, we can use the microcanonical ensemble and look at the set of all points in our phase space where our energy lies between
Comparison with Gibbs measure. (Lebowitz, Bourgain,…) In this construction, one exponentiates the Hamiltonian and interprets this as a density with respect to the Wiener measure. For the Gibbs measure,
A rigorous result. NLS defines a dynamical system on the space
Theorem: The
These are the “end states” which solutions approach in the weak topology.
Question: Does every
Heuristics: If
Interpretation:
The solutions do not quite approach
2D incompressible Euler
the situation is quite similar. The difference between 2D Euler and NLS is that, in some sense, 2D Euler is a Poisson system instead of a Hamiltonian system. The system is a Hamiltonian system on symplectic leaves. Formally, 2D Euler should be viewed as a family of Hamiltonian systems and the orbit takes place on the leaf.Fourier representation. Stream function. Energy. Conserved quantities associated with vorticity transport.
Natural “phase space”….
Analogy with NLS. He draws a table.
- Phase space:
…. - Weakly continuous: Momentum, mass ….
- Lower semicontinues: Energy….. ack slide changed.
More geometric picture. We know that a good topology is the weak * topology on
Example: Data that looks like
Onsager 1947, Montgomery-Johce, 1970s, Miller, Robert 1990s, Turkington 1990s, closely related to Shnirelman’s notion of “mixing”.
Looks similar to Ising model, except that the interaction is long-range. “Most-probable” configuration for a given energy
He draws another analogy diagram.
- NLS …. 2D Euler
…..Ising config- Classical Maxwell Boltzmann microcannical ensemble picture……fermions (generalized) with long range interaction.
A more geometric picture for Euler (a sketch).
Geometric finite-d approximations inside the
Determining the “end states” for Euler.
Calcuating the “entropy” etc., one gets different answers depending upon how one counts.
In Euler on the torus, the temperature is not zero but is instead negative as was observed by Onsager. All these predictions suggest that hte “end states” consist of shear flows.
An example where transfer to high frequencies was proved: Landau damping.
The only situation where this was rigorously proved wiath the Vlasov-Poisson system.
- Landau 1946
- Caglioti-Maffei
- Hwang-Velazquez 2008
- Mouhot-Villani 2009
- Linear Landau damping: Yes (Sverak)
- Nonlinear case: probably yes, but seems more difficult than the Vlasov-Poisson case.
- 2d NLS: “I-team”
- Various model situations: Bourgain,…
In discussion after the talk, Sverak suggested that these minimizers are not localized onto single Fourier modes and instead appear to be some kind of “breather” solution. These objects should have variational stability properties resembling corresponding statements about solitons and built along the motif of Arnold Stability results as appearing in the book by Khesin.
T. Oh reported to me that some studies like those suggested in this talk appear in work of Chatterjee-Kirkpatrick.
Antoine Choffrut: On the local structure of the set of stationary flows to the 2D incompressible Euler equations

(chalk talk)
The Euler flow evolves on symplectic leaves. If you start on one of these leaves, then the Euler flow stays on the leaf. The result I want to prevent is the following. Suppose you have a stationary solution on one leaf, then the other stationary solutions are located on a curve that passes through the leaves. There is a 1-1 correspondence between the stationary solutions and the leaves.
This talk will be a bit more elementary than the other talks. Some aspects were forecasted by Preston and Sverak in earlier talks in this workshop.
Consider a (potato shaped) domain
In 2D, we introduce
How do you recover
Kelvin: A curve
I can rewrite the vorticity equation as
Transport interpretation.
Coadjoint orbit.
Theorem (Choffrut-Sverak; GAFA 2012): Let
The proof is by an inverse function theorem. I need to say how I am going to implement this function theorem. How do I describe my orbits? How do I describe my steady states? I want to show these are in one-to-one correspondence.
….lots of discussion…..smooth dependence….lots of chatter…..speaker needs to be able to describe more.
Characterization of steady states. The transport equation tells me that there is no dependence of
Characterization of coadjoint orbits.
Transport
Correspondence.
- Steady states ……… F
- Orbits …………. A
Recall
Euler as a geodesic configuration space. Lagrangian least action principle. Marchioro-Pulvarenti, Chemin.
Clairaut, Noether, Lie group with (left) invariant metric.
That was the Lagrangian formulation on the tangent space. The real action takes place in the cotangent bundle where we have a Hamiltonian formalism.
Thomas Kappeler: Symplectic techniques for integrable PDEs

(pdf slides)
Aim: Survey of recent results on integraple PDEs obtained by symplectic techniques. The model equation is the
Topics:
- Phase portrait/ space of orbits; construction of normal coordinates
- Asymptotic properties of solutions
- KAM theorem
Phase space:
There is a canonical Poisson bracket
Defocusing NLS. Focusing NLS.
Defocusing NLS as an integrable PDE on T. Grebert-Kappeler-Poschel “The defocusing NLS equation and its normal form” to appear in EMS.
Focusing NLS as integrable PDE: only few results.
Part 1. Review of NF for defocusing NLS.
Theorem (GKP): There exists a canonical map (closely related to the Fourier transform) which reveals that defocusing NLS may be viewed as a system of infintely many coupled oscillators.Steps of proof:
Local part. We have to construct these coordinates
Global part. We have a global chart.
Zakharov-Shabat operator (ZS)
- Lax pair for NLS
- Periodic spectrum of
on [0,2].
- characteristic function
- two-sheeted spectral curve
The eigenvalues come in pairs. Asymptotically, they are like
Construction of actions/angles
- Choose cycles
- Cycles induce (i) actions and (ii) 1-forms.
- 1-forms induce angles.
Birkhoff coordinates
Euclidean versions of these action angle coordinates.Important features of construction
- same cycles
were used to define and the 1-forms . - Cycles/1-forms are defined on the spectral curve and not on phase space.
Part 2. Normal Form for fNLS
- There do not exist global Birkhoff coordinates.
- The associated Zakharov-Shabat operator
is not necessarily self-adjoint. - Symmetries of
. can be described.
Standard Potentials
Describes how to carry out the construction. The focusing case requires local constructions.The discussion here is very precise and I don’t think I can convey more than is available on the slides.
…
Part 4. KAM for defocusing NLS
- Defocusing NLS is integrable on all of
. - Question: KAM on
, not only near equilibrium point 0? - Defocusing NLS frequencies can be expressed using the Birkhoff coordinates.
Near resonances
for jeopardizes measure estimate of standard KAM theorem for integrable PDE.- Ways to overcome difficulties:
- Craig-Wayne-Bourgain method. Bourgain, IMRN 95
- Kuksin-Poschel, Berti
- Restrict the perturbations Geng-You CMP 06, JDE 05