Turbulent cascades in a truncation of the cubic Szegő equation and related systems

Abstract

The cubic Szego equation has been studied as an integrable model for deterministic turbulence, starting with the foundational work of Gerard and Grellier. We introduce a truncated version of this equation, wherein a majority of the Fourier mode couplings are eliminated while the signature features of the model are preserved, namely, a Lax-pair structure and a nested hierarchy of finite-dimensional dynamically invariant manifolds. Despite the impoverished structure of the interactions, the turbulent behaviors of our new equation are stronger in an appropriate sense than for the original cubic Szego equation. We construct explicit analytic solutions displaying exponential growth of Sobolev norms. We furthermore introduce a family of models that interpolate between our truncated system and the original cubic Szego equation, along with a few other related deformations. All of these models possess Lax pairs, invariant manifolds, and display a variety of turbulent cascades. We additionally mention numerical evidence that shows an even stronger type of turbulence in the form of a finite-time blow-up in some different, closely related dynamical systems.