Comparison of Inertial Manifolds and Application to Modulated Systems

Abstract

We consider two dissipative systems having inertial manifolds and give estimates which allow us to compare the flows on the two inertial manifolds. As an example of a modulated system we treat the Swift–Hohenberg equation , ∈ ℝ, with periodic boundary conditions on the interval . Recent results in the theory of modulation equation show that the solutions of this equation can be described over long time scales by those of the associated Ginzburg–Landau equation ∈ ℂ, with suitably generalized periodic boundary conditions on . We prove that both systems have an inertial manifold of the same dimension and that the flows on these finite dimensional manifolds converge against each other for .