Galerkin method

The Galerkin method seeks an approximate solution in a finite-dimensional subspace and requires the equation's residual to be orthogonal to that subspace. Uniform energy estimates and compactness can then produce a weak solution as the subspaces become dense.

The Petrov-Galerkin method chooses an approximate solution $u_h$ in a finite-dimensional trial vector space $V_h$ and tests a weak formulation against a possibly different test space $W_h$. For a bilinear form $a$ and a linear functional $\ell$, it imposes $a(u_h,v_h)=\ell (v_h)$ for every $v_h\in W_h$. Taking $W_h=V_h$ recovers the usual Galerkin method. Different test functions can alter stability and accuracy; the Galerkin orthogonality is then against the test space and need not be an orthogonal projection in an energy norm.

A Fourier truncation retains a finite set of boundary-compatible Fourier modes and projects the PDE onto their span by the Galerkin method. Nonlinear products can generate unretained harmonics, so their coefficients are discarded by projection rather than declared zero pointwise. Agreement with a perturbation expansion through cubic order requires retention of every quadratically forced mode that feeds back on the critical mode at cubic order.

// Destination: dynamical-systems.bigb

If $X_0$ embeds compactly into $X$ and $X$ embeds continuously into $X_1$, then boundedness in $L^p(0,T;X_0)$ together with a suitable time-derivative bound in $L^q(0,T;X_1)$ makes a family relatively compact in $L^p(0,T;X)$. A standard case is

If $u\in L^{\infty }(0,T;H)$ and $u_t\in L^q(0,T;V^{\prime })$ for a dense continuous embedding $V\hookrightarrow H$ and some $q>1$, then $u$ has a representative in $C([0,T];H_{\mathrm{weak}})$. Indeed, its pairing with each element of a dense subset of $V$ is absolutely continuous, and the uniform $H$ bound extends continuity to every element of $H$.

If $u:[0,T]\to H$ is weakly continuous and an energy equality makes $t\mapsto \Vert u(t){\Vert }_H$ continuous, then $u$ is strongly continuous. This follows from the Radon-Riesz theorem applied whenever $t_n\to t$.