On the long-time statistical behavior of smooth solutions of the weakly damped, stochastically-driven KdV equation.

This paper considers the damped periodic Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation in the presence of a white-in-time and spatially smooth stochastic source term and studies the long-time behavior of solutions. We show that the integrals of motion for KdV can be exploited to prove regularity and ergodic properties of invariant measures for damped stochastic KdV. First, by considering non-trivial modifications of the integrals of motion, we establish Lyapunov structure by proving that moments of Sobolev norms of solutions at all orders of regularity are bounded globally-in-time; existence of invariant measures follows as an immediate consequence. Next, we prove a weak Foias-Prodi type estimate for damped stochastic KdV, for which the synchronization occurs in expected value. This estimate plays a crucial role throughout our subsequent analysis. As a first novel application, we combine the Foias-Prodi estimate with the Lyapunov structure to establish that invariant measures are supported on $C^\infty$ functions provided that the external driving forces belong to $C^\infty$. We then establish ergodic properties of invariant measures, treating the regimes of arbitrary damping and large damping separately. For arbitrary damping, we demonstrate that the framework of `asymptotic coupling' can be implemented for a compact proof of uniqueness of the invariant measure provided that sufficiently many directions in phase space are stochastically forced. Our proof is paradigmatic for SPDEs for which a weak Foias-Prodi type property holds. Lastly, for large damping, we establish the existence of a spectral gap with respect to a Wasserstein-like distance, and exponential mixing and uniqueness of the invariant measure follows.