Inertial manifold

In mathematics, inertial manifolds are concerned with the long term behavior of the solutions of dissipative dynamical systems. Inertial manifolds are finite-dimensional, smooth, invariant manifolds that contain the global attractor and attract all solutions exponentially quickly. Since an inertial manifold is finite-dimensional even if the original system is infinite-dimensional, and because most of the dynamics for the system takes place on the inertial manifold, studying the dynamics on an inertial manifold produces a considerable simplification in the study of the dynamics of the original system.

In many physical applications, inertial manifolds express an interaction law between the small and large wavelength structures. Some say that the small wavelengths are enslaved by the large (e.g. synergetics). Inertial manifolds may also appear as slow manifolds common in meteorology, or as the center manifold in any bifurcation. Computationally, numerical schemes for partial differential equations seek to capture the long term dynamics and so such numerical schemes form an approximate inertial manifold.

Consider the dynamical system in just two variables ${\displaystyle p(t)}$ and ${\displaystyle q(t)}$ and with parameter ${\displaystyle a}$:

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