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# How does the chain extension of poly (acrylic acid) scale in aqueous solution? A combined study with light scattering and computer simulation

## 1 Introduction

Poly (acrylic acid) (PAA) is a water-soluble polyelectrolyte (PE). It is important not only in industrial applications, e.g. flocculants or superabsorbers . Because of its relatively simple chemical repeat unit, it is also a prototype PE model for scientific investigations. Surprisingly, there seems to be no (accurate) data on some solution properties of PAA chains. Quantities which characterize the solution behaviour of isolated polymer chains are the radius of gyration $`R_G`$ and the hydrodynamic radius $`R_H`$. It is the main purpose of this letter to provide reliable values for PAA of different chainlengths.

Two approaches are being used. Experimentally, we determine the size of a polymer coil in solution by dynamic ($`R_H`$) or static ($`R_G`$) light scattering. The measurements were performed using narrow fractions of radically polymerized PAA in order to, on the one hand, minimize effects of polydispersity and to, on the other hand, avoid possible problems of PAA aggregation due to hydrophobic initiators used in anionic polymerization . These data are augmented by results from computer simulations. Simulations have the principal advantage that macroscopic observations can be understood in terms of a microscopic model. We will use them here to investigate the scaling of the polymer also at length scales shorter than the overall coil size ($`R_G`$ or $`R_H`$) which is accessible by the light-scattering experiment. This is the second aim of this work.

The experimentally relevant molecular weights are far beyond what can be simulated with an atomistic model. They are, however, accessible with suitably simplified or ”coarse-grained” (CG) models. Care has to be taken that the CG model retains sufficient information about the chemical nature of the polymer. A generic bead-spring model might be good enough for theoretical scaling relations , but will not give realistic absolute values for $`R_H`$ of specific polymers like PAA. A number of systematic coarse-graining procedures have been described , but none has been tried for specific PEs in solution. We have recently developed an automatic coarse-graining method which works by a two-step process: Firstly, an atomistic simulation of a PAA oligomer in water is performed. Secondly, the CG model is parametrized to reproduce the PAA structure . To validate this method and to try out technical variants on it is the third objective of the letter.

## 2 Methods

### 2.1 Experimental

#### 2.1.1 Static and Dynamic Light Scattering

For simultaneous static and dynamic light scattering measurements a commercial instrument (ALV-5000) with a krypton ion laser operating at a wavelength of 647 nm and an Avalanche Diode (EG&G) as detector was used . Static measurements were performed at scattering angles of $`30^{}150^{}`$ in $`10^{}`$ steps in the concentration range of $`0.55`$ g/L. For the high molecular weights the highest concentration was only $`3.5`$ g/L in order to remain in the dilute regime. Weight average molar masses $`M_W`$ and radii of gyration $`R_G`$ were obtained by Zimm extrapolation using the Rayleigh ratio $`RR=1.270\mathrm{cm}^1`$. The refractive index increments $`dn/dc`$ are listed in Table 2, as measured at $`\lambda =663`$ nm using a scanning Michelson interferometer .

Dynamic measurements were performed over an angle range from $`60^{}150^{}`$ in $`30^{}`$ steps. The intensity autocorrelation function of the scattered intensity was converted to the scattered electric field and analyzed using the program CONTIN by S.Provencher . Hydrodynamic radii $`R_H`$ were obtained via the Stokes-Einstein relation, where the apparent diffusion coefficient $`D=\mathrm{\Gamma }/q^2`$ was calculated from the inverse relaxation time $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the absolute value $`q`$ of the scattering vector. Viscosity corrections due to the NaCl were considered to be small and not taken into account. The hydrodynamic radius $`R_H`$ was measured repeatedly. In Figure 2 the average values and error bars representing one standard deviation are plotted.

#### 2.1.2 Sample Preparation

The PAA samples (Polymer Standard Service) with molar masses of $`M_W=18000296600`$ g/mol were synthesized by radical polymerization and fractionated with polydispersities $`D_P=M_W/M_N`$ between 1.5 and 1.8 (with $`M_N`$ being the number average molecular weight). All samples were dissolved in deionized water (Millipore) with $`1M`$ NaCl. The $`pH`$ was determined for two samples ($`M_W=81800`$ and $`296600`$) at two different concentrations ($`1`$ g/L and $`5`$ g/L) and found to lie between $`68`$. After further purification, we performed additional measurements by dialysis using a regenerated cellulose membran (MWCO2000). The dialysis process lasted 40 hours and the deionized water (Millipore) was replaced four times. Afterwards, the samples were freeze-dried for 5 hours and finally dried under vaccuum for 60 hours at $`T=303`$ K, in order to avoid fluctuations of the PAA concentration by adsorbed water. The refractive index increments for the dialyzed and dried samples remained unchanged within the statistical errors. All solutions were filtered through a $`0.22`$ $`\mu `$m Millex-GS filter (Millipore) to remove dust particles.

### 2.2 Computational

#### 2.2.1 The Coarse-grained Force Field for PAA

Coarse-grained potential energy functions for polymers have to incorporate not only energetic, i.e. local aspects of the underlying microscopic model. They also have to account for entropic contributions from the neglected conformational degrees of freedom of the chain. Therefore, we utilized structural information obtained from fully atomistic simulations as target functions to construct our CG force field. In particular, we used the intra- and inter-chain radial distribution functions which, being distributions derived from an ensemble, contain the desired entropic information. This is a so-called inverse problem: find an interparticle potential which reproduces a given radial distribution function (RDF) or set of RDFs. For the fitting procedure, we applied an automatic optimization algorithm (simplex) which was originally implemented for the development of atomistic force fields  and tested for liquids. Our force field is based on atomistic simulation data by Biermann et al.. They studied one fully deprotonated, atactic oligomer of 23 monomers with 23 Na+ counterions in 3684 water molecules (simple point charge (SPC) model ) at ambient conditions. The system represents a diluted ($`2.3`$wt$`\%`$) PAA solution. From this simulation, structural information like the distributions of bond angles or RDFs between monomers were extracted. We mapped this system to the mesoscale by replacing each repeat unit (i.e. each monomer) by one bead, either at the monomers center of mass or at the backbone carbon bearing the carboxyl group. The PAA mesoscale force field includes bonded and non-bonded interactions. To both contribute several terms . They were parametrised by systematically varying the interactions until the structure of the atomistic model was reproduced. This also allowed us to omit all explicit water molecules and counter ions. Their effect on the PAA chain conformation is, however, implicitly present in the model. In effect, a system of roughly $`10000`$ Atoms could thus be reduced to a system which consists of only $`23`$ ”superatoms”.

For the sake of gaining experience with CG force fields, we have coarse-grained PAA in three different ways. Potential $`I`$ is pieced together from various analytic functions. It contains attractive as well as repulsive intermolecular interactions. Coulomb forces were only implicitly taken into account (they were present in the parent atomistic simulation). That is because the Debye length (characterizing the relative importance of the electrostatic energy compared to thermal energy) of the system is close to that of water, so that electrostatic interactions can be treated as being short-ranged. For details, see ref 17. Potential $`II`$ is similar in construction, but uses another location of the CG bead: While Potential $`I`$ placed it at the center of mass of a monomer, Potential $`II`$ employed the backbone carbon parent to the COO--group . As example for the achieved convergence, the RDF (first neighbours excluded) is shown in Figure 1a. Potential $`III`$ uses again the center-of-mass of the PAA monomer, but was optimized with a fully numerical instead of a piecewise analytical potential energy function for the non-bonded interactions . It allows us to apply a new self-consistent optimization algorithm which was recently adapted by us.  The optimization then yields an almost perfect match of the RDF. Target RDFs (exluding first and second neighbours, as defined in Ref.) and the results of the optimization are shown in Figure 1b. The parameters of force fields $`I`$ and $`II`$ are presented in Table 1. The non-bonded part of Potential $`III`$ exists in numerical form only  (not shown here).

#### 2.2.2 Technical Simulation Details

Both Brownian Dynamics (BD) and Monte Carlo (MC) programs were used to carry out the PAA simulations. We simulated at $`T=333.15`$ K, which corresponds to the temperature of the atomistic simulations. The Langevin equations of motion were integrated by the velocity Verlet algorithm with a time step $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.01\tau `$, and a friction constant $`\gamma =0.5\tau ^1`$. Pivot MC calculations were necessary to simulate systems of more than $`1000`$ monomers as the equilibration is much faster. We carried out $`10^5`$ accepted equilibration moves before a production run of $`10^6`$ accepted moves started.

## 3 Results and Discussion

The hydrodynamic radii of six different PAA samples with molecular weights in the range from $`18100`$ to $`296600`$ g/mol were measured (see Table 2). For four samples, the molar masses $`M_W`$ and the radii of gyration $`R_\mathrm{G}`$ were measured in 1M NaCl solution. (For the samples of lower molecular weight an accurate determination of $`R_G`$ was not possible, so they are reported as specified by the supplier.) Additionally, the ratio $`R_G/R_H`$ and the refractive index increment $`n/c`$ are shown in Table 2. In all PAA solutions, the salt content was so high that the electrostatic interactions were effectively screened. Therefore, $`R_G`$ could be obtained from the static scattering experiment by Zimm extrapolation to zero angle and zero polymer concentration $`c_p`$ like for uncharged polymers. The dynamic measurements in $`1`$M NaCl solution yielded single-exponential autocorrelation functions, since we performed our measurements in the ”ordinary regime” where $`c^\mathrm{m}/c_\mathrm{s}^\mathrm{m}<1`$, with $`c^\mathrm{m}`$ and $`c_\mathrm{s}^\mathrm{m}`$ being the molar concentration of monomer units and of salt, respectively. No polyelectrolyte slow mode due to a cooperative diffusion behavior was observed. Furthermore, the diffusion coefficients do not show any significant angular dependence.

For two samples with molecular weigths of $`M_W=119800`$ g/mol and $`M_W=204000`$ g/mol, we varied the NaCl concentration between $`0.11`$ mol/L at a fixed polymer concentration of $`1`$ g/L, as shown in Figure 2a. No dependence of the diffusion coefficient or $`R_H`$ is found within this range. Figure 2b shows a weak decrease of $`R_H`$ with polymer concentration in the range of $`05`$ g/L for two molecular weights $`M_W`$ at fixed NaCl concentration of $`1`$ M. For further comparisons we use the values extrapolated to zero concentration. Thus the static as well as dynamic light scattering experiments represent measurements of single polylelectrolyte molecules. The hydrodynamic radii are plotted in Figure 3 as a function of molecular mass. We find a scaling exponent of $`\nu =0.56\pm 0.02`$. This scaling exponent compares well with CG simulation results (below).

In Table 3, the corresponding theoretical data is presented for $`13`$ different chain lengths (being single chains, the simulated polymers are monodisperse). They include all the experimental ones when converting the mean molar weights $`M_W`$ into the degree of polymerization. We plotted them in Figure 3a, too. Over the whole range of measured samples, the coincidence is excellent. This is especially remarkable if one considers the fact that the simulation model was developed with a PAA chain consisting of only $`23`$ monomers.

In order to check the transferability of parameters between oligomer chains of different lengths, we executed new atomistic simulations of shorter chains with the same force field as used by Biermann et al. in their work.  The PAA was dissolved in $`4000`$ water molecules (concentration $`c_p1`$ g/L) and the total simulation time was $`6`$ ns. The concentration of sodium counterions was determined to be around $`0.44`$ mol/L for all atomistic simulations, which lies in the middle of the experimentally tested ones. A ”downward” transferability could be obtained for both samples. The CG model developed for a $`23`$-monomer chain, faithfully reproduces also the $`R_H`$ and $`R_G`$ of the atomistic $`8`$\- and $`12`$-mers, cf. Table 3a. It is also interesting to investigate the stability of $`R_H`$ for the various simulation models $`I`$, $`II`$ and $`III`$. As shown in Table 3b, the coincidence is good for all chain lengths. This means that our CG mapping is not unique. Structural properties can be determined from any of the above model variants. That might be of use, if one is interested in properties pertaining to the center-of-mass or of the CH-backbone carbon.

In the following, we focus our attention on the original force field $`I`$. The simulated $`R_H`$ for chains longer than $`100`$ monomers was fitted by a power law $`R_HM_W^\nu `$. The resulting scaling exponent $`\nu `$ was $`0.55\pm 0.02`$. If we restrict the fit of the experimental data to the simulated chain lengths, we obtain the same exponent. Experiments and simulation yield, hence, very similar results. It can be concluded that the salt concentration (used in experiments) or sodium counterion concentration (in the parent atomistic simulations) effectively screen the charges of the PAA chain. Thus, the Coulomb potential of PAA is really reduced to an effective short-ranged interaction. For small distances, though, the charges stiffen the chain. This behaviour can be understood in the framework of scaling theory. For a Gaussian chain (model of a linear fully-flexible polymer) in a good solvent, self-avoiding walk (SAW) statistics applies. It yields a scaling exponent of $`\nu =0.588`$ in the limit of infinitely long chains . This scaling factor is universal, i.e. it is valid for every size-characterizing function, e.g. $`R_G`$ or $`R_H`$. The structur factor $`S(q)`$, however, is an even better function to investigate. That is, because it scales as $`S(q)q^{1/\nu }`$, which we can try to fit for any length scale up to the total size of the polymer. So, local deviations from the global behaviour, as measured by the experiment, can be observed. Figure 3b shows the structure factor of the coarse-grained BD simulation of a PAA $`460`$-mer. Apart from noise in the region $`q>10`$, three different regimes can be distinguished: On very short distances (nearest neighbours), the slope equals $`1.65=1/\nu `$, i.e. corresponding to a ”local” scaling exponent of $`\nu =0.61`$. This is remarkably close to, but larger than the value for a SAW ($`0.588`$). Compared to a Gaussian chain, this is due to the stiffening bond angle potential of the chain (in the CG picture). Next comes the region in which torsions and non-bonded interactions become important. They introduce even more stiffness, resulting in a large exponent of $`\nu =0.82`$. Finally, the long-range behaviour sets in ($`\nu =0.56`$), almost yielding the obtained total scaling exponent for $`R_H`$. So we can conclude that PAA globally behaves like a fully-flexible chain without charges. These results are very similar for any other large-enough PAA sample. We note also that the original target RDF of the 23-mer is reproduced by any $`23`$-monomer sub-strand of the $`460`$-mer (data not shown). For $`R_G`$, scaling similar to that of $`R_H`$ is, as expected, obtained in the limit of sufficiently long chains ($`>100`$ monomers). In Figure 3a, this can be seen by examining the ratio $`R_G/R_H`$: a plateau region is reached for long chains, with a value of around $`1.5`$. This is the value predicted for Gaussian chains. A closer look, however, reveals a monotonically increasing ratio (cf. Table 3), exceeding the value of $`1.5`$. The reason for this behaviour are the corrections to scaling due to the good solvent statistics of the chain, which have been known for a long time . For $`R_H`$, this motivated the empirical indroduction of an effective exponent $`\nu _{eff}0.55`$, which exactly equals our findings. A detailed analysis of these corrections, whose asymptotic value is found to be $`R_G/R_H1.61`$, will be presented elsewhere .

## Acknowledgements

Oliver Hahn (`md_spherical`) and Mathias Pütz (`prism`) are gratefully acknowledged for making available the code of their simulation programs. We are indebted to Franziska Gröhn for her contributions to our work. We also acknowledge fruitful discussions with Kurt Kremer, Manfred Schmidt, Klaus Huber and Thorsten Hofe, whom we also thank for free PAA samples and complementary measurements with an online light scattering detector.


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# 1 Introduction.

## 1 Introduction.

The goal of this paper to present self-contained account of the ODE-type proofs from \[ES, MS, S\] of the existence and uniqueness of the Navier-Stokes systems with periodic boundary conditions on the plane. Mattingly and Sinai called their proof elementary (see title of \[MS\]), but their proof was ODE-type (elementary in their sense) only up to the moment of getting the trapping regions for all Galerkin projections, but to pass to the limit with the dimensions of Galerkin projections they invoked the now standard results from \[CF, DG, T\] (which are not elementary in any sense), which are usually not mastered by the researchers working in dynamics of ODE’s, to which this note is mainly addressed. Here we fill-in this gap by giving ODE-type arguments, which allow to pass to the limit. Using ODE-type estimates based on the logarithmic norms we also obtained uniqueness and an estimate for the Lipschitz constant of evolution induced by the Navier-Stokes equations . In fact we have proved that on the trapping region we have semidynamical system. The results we prove here are well known for Navier-Stokes system in 2D (see for example \[FT, ES, K, DT\]), but the method of getting estimates on Galerkin projections presented in section 5 appears to be new.

Another goal of this paper is to prepare the ground for the rigorous study of the dynamics of the Navier-Stokes equations with periodic boundary conditions. The trapping regions described here are particular examples of the self-consistent apriori bounds introduced in \[ZM\] for the rigorous study of the dynamics of the dissipative PDE’s.

A few words about a general construction of the paper: In sections 2 and 3 we recall the results from \[ES, MS, S\] about the trapping regions. Sections 4 and 5 contain ODE-type proofs of the convergence of the Galerkin scheme on trapping regions. The remaining sections contain the existence results for the Navier-Stokes equations on the plane and the Sannikov and Kaloshin \[S\] result in the dimension three.

## 2 Navier-Stokes equations

The general $`d`$-dimensional Navier-Stokes system (NSS) is written for $`d`$ unknown functions $`u(t,x)=(u_1(t,x),\mathrm{},u_d(t,x))`$ of $`d`$ variables $`x=(x_1,\mathrm{},x_d)`$ and time $`t`$ and the pressure $`p(t,x)`$.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{u_i}{t}}+{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{d}{}}}u_k{\displaystyle \frac{u_i}{x_k}}=\nu \mathrm{}u_i{\displaystyle \frac{p}{x_i}}+f^{(i)}`$ (1)
$`\text{div}u={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{u_i}{x_i}}=0`$ (2)
The functions $`f^{(i)}`$ are the components of the external forcing, $`\nu >0`$ is the viscosity.

We consider (1),(2) on the torus $`\text{𝕋}^d=\left(\text{}/2\pi \right)^d`$. This allows us to use Fourier series. We write

$$u(t,x)=\underset{k\text{}^d}{}u_k(t)e^{i(k,x)},p(t,x)=\underset{k\text{}^d}{}p_k(t)e^{i(k,x)}$$
(3)
Observe that $`u_k(t)\text{}^d`$, i.e. they are $`d`$-dimensional vectors and $`p_k(t)\text{}`$. We will always assume that $`f_0=0`$ and $`u_0=0`$.

Observe that (2) is reduced to the requirement $`u_kk`$. Namely

$`\text{div}u={\displaystyle \underset{k\text{}^d}{}}i(k,u_k(t))e^{i(k,x)}=0`$
$`(k,u_k)=0k\text{}^d`$
To derive the evolution equation for $`u_k(t)`$ we will compute now the nonlinear term in (1). We will use the following notation $`u_k=(u_{k,1},\mathrm{},u_{k,d})`$

$`{\displaystyle \underset{l}{}}u_l{\displaystyle \frac{u}{x_l}}=\left({\displaystyle \underset{k_1,l}{}}u_{k_1,l}e^{i(k_1,x)}\right)\left({\displaystyle \underset{k_2}{}}ik_{2,l}u_{k_2}e^{i(k_2,x)}\right)=`$ (4)
$`=i{\displaystyle \underset{l,k_1,k_2}{}}e^{i(k_1+k_2,x)}k_{2}^{}{}_{l}{}^{}u_{k_1,l}u_{k_2}=i{\displaystyle \underset{k_1,k_2}{}}e^{i(k_1+k_2,x)}(k_2|u_{k_1})u_{k_2}=`$ (5)
$`i{\displaystyle \underset{k\text{}^d}{}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k_1}{}}(u_{k_1}|kk_1)u_{kk_1}\right)e^{i(k,x)}=i{\displaystyle \underset{k\text{}^d}{}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k_1}{}}(u_{k_1}|k)u_{kk_1}\right)e^{i(k,x)}`$ (6)
We obtain the following infinite ladder of differential equations for $`u_k`$

$$\frac{du_k}{dt}=i\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)u_{kk_1}\nu k^2u_kip_kk+f_k$$
(7)
Here $`f_k`$ are components of the external forcing. Let $`_k`$ denote the operator of orthogonal projection to the $`(d1)`$-dimensional plane orthogonal to $`k`$. Observe that since $`(u_k,k)=0`$ we have $`_ku_k=u_k`$. We apply the projection $`_k`$ to (7). The term $`p_kk`$ disappears and we obtain

$$\frac{du_k}{dt}=i\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}\nu k^2u_k+_kf_k$$
(8)
The pressure is given by the following formula

$$i\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)(I_k)u_{kk_1}ip_kk+(I_k)f_k=0$$
(9)
Observe that solutions of (8) satisfy incompressibility condition $`(u_k,k)=0`$. The the subspace of real functions, which can be defined by $`\overline{u_k}=u_k`$ for all $`k\text{}^d`$, where by $`\overline{z}`$ for $`z\text{}`$ we denote the conjugate of $`z`$, is invariant under (8). In the sequel we will investigate the equation (8) restricted to this subspace.

###### Definition 1

Enstrophy of $`\{u_k,k\text{}^d\}`$ is

$$V(\{u_k,k\text{}^d\})=\underset{k\text{}^d}{}|k|^2|u_k|^2$$

## 3 Construction of trapping regions from \[ES, MS\]

The idea in \[ES, MS\] is to construct a trapping region for each Galerkin projection and this trapping region give uniform bounds allowing passing to the limit. The trapping region  for an ODE (here Galerkin projection of Navier-Stokes equations) is a set such that the vector field on its boundary is pointing inside, hence no trajectory can leave it in forward time. In the sequel we consider only the Galerkin projection onto the set of modes $`O`$, such that if $`kO`$ then $`kO`$. We will call such projections symmetric.

###### Lemma 1

$`d=2`$. For any solution of (8) (such that all necessary Fourier series converge) or the symmetric Galerkin projection of (8) we have

$$\frac{dV\{u_k(t)\}}{dt}2\nu V(\{u_k(t)\})+2V(F)\sqrt{V(\{u_k(t)\})},$$
(10)
where $`V(F)=\sqrt{|k|^2f_k^2}`$.

The proof can be found in many text-books, see also \[Si\].

The inequality (10) shows that

$$\frac{dV\{u_k(t)\}}{dt}<0,\text{when}V>V^{}=\left(\frac{F}{\nu }\right)^2$$
(11)
###### Lemma 2

Assume that $`\{u_k,k\text{}^d\}`$ is such that for some $`D<\mathrm{}`$, $`\gamma >1+\frac{d}{2}`$

$$|u_k|\frac{D}{k^\gamma },\text{and}V(\{u_k\})V_0$$
(12)
then for $`d3`$

$$|\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{C\sqrt{V_0}D}{k^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}}},$$
(13)
where constant $`C`$ depends only on $`\gamma `$ and dimension $`d`$ and for $`d=2`$ for any $`ϵ>0`$

$$|\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{C(ϵ,\gamma )\sqrt{V_0}D}{k^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}ϵ}},$$
(14)
Proof:

In order to estimate the sum $`|_{k_1}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|`$ we will use the following inequality

$$|(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|=|(u_{k_1}|kk_1)_ku_{kk_1}||u_{k_1}||kk_1||u_{kk_1}|$$
(15)
We consider three cases.

Case I. $`|k_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|`$.

Here $`|kk_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|`$ and therefore $`|u_{kk_1}||kk_1|\frac{D}{|kk_1|^{\gamma 1}}\frac{2^{\gamma 1}D}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}`$. Now observe that

$$\underset{|k_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|}{}|u_{k_1}|=\underset{|k_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|}{}|k_1||u_{k_1}|\frac{1}{|k_1|}\sqrt{|k_1|^2|u_{k_1}|^2}\sqrt{\underset{|k_1|<\frac{1}{2}|k|}{}\frac{1}{|k_1|^2}}$$
(16)
The sum $`_{|k_1|<\frac{1}{2}|k|}\frac{1}{|k_1|^2}`$ can be estimates from above by a constant times an integral of $`\frac{1}{r^2}`$ over the ball of radius $`\frac{1}{2}|k|`$ with the ball around the origin removed. Hence for $`d=2`$ we have

$$\underset{|k_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|}{}\frac{1}{|k_1|^2}C_1^{|k|/2}\frac{rdr}{r^2}C\mathrm{ln}|k|$$
(17)
For $`d3`$ we have

$$\underset{|k_1|\frac{1}{2}|k|}{}\frac{1}{|k_1|^2}C_1^{|k|/2}\frac{r^{d1}dr}{r^2}C|k|^{d2}$$
(18)
From all the above computations it follows that for $`d3`$ holds

$$|\underset{|k_1|\frac{|k|}{2}}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{2^{\gamma 1}D}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}\sqrt{V_0}\sqrt{C}|k|^{\frac{d}{2}1}=\frac{2^{\gamma 1}D\sqrt{V_0}\sqrt{C}}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}}}$$
(19)
For $`d=2`$ we have

$$|\underset{|k_1|\frac{|k|}{2}}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{2^{\gamma 1}D}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}\sqrt{V_0}\sqrt{C}\sqrt{\mathrm{ln}|k|}<\frac{C\sqrt{V_0}D}{|k|^{\gamma 1ϵ}}$$
(20)
Case II.  $`\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|`$.

$$|u_{k_1}|<\frac{D}{|k_1^\gamma |}<\frac{D}{\left(\frac{|k|}{2}\right)^\gamma }=\frac{2^\gamma D}{|k|^\gamma }$$
(21)
Hence

$$\underset{\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|}{}|u_{k_1}||u_{kk_1}||kk_1|\frac{2^\gamma D}{|k|^\gamma }\underset{\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|}{}|u_{kk_1}||kk_1|$$
(22)
We interpret $`_{\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|}|u_{kk_1}||kk_1|`$ as a scalar product of $`|u_{kk_1}||kk_1|`$ and $`1`$, hence by the Schwarz inequality

$$\underset{\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|}{}|u_{kk_1}||kk_1|\sqrt{\underset{|k_1|3|k|}{}|u_{k_1}|^2|k_1|^2}\sqrt{C(3|k|)^d},$$
(23)
where $`C`$ is such that $`C(3|k|)^d`$ is greater or equal than the number of vectors in $`\text{}^d`$, which are contained in the ball of radius $`3|k|`$ around the origin.

Finally we obtain

$$\underset{\frac{1}{2}|k|<|k_1|2|k|}{}|u_{k_1}||u_{kk_1}||kk_1|\frac{2^\gamma D\stackrel{~}{C}\sqrt{V_0}}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}}}$$
(24)
Case III. $`|k_1|>2|k|`$. Here we $`|kk_1|>|k|`$.

$`{\displaystyle |u_{k_1}||kk_1||u_{kk_1}|}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k|}}{\displaystyle |u_{k_1}||k_1||kk_1||u_{kk_1}|}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k|}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle |u_{k_1}|^2|k_1|^2}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle |u_{kk_1}|^2|kk_1|^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{V_0}}{|k|}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \underset{|k_1|>2|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{D^2}{|k_1|^{2\gamma 2}}}}=`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{V_0}D}{|k|}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \underset{|k_1|>2|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k_1|^{2\gamma 2}}}}`$
To estimate $`_{|k_1|>2|k|}\frac{1}{|k_1|^{2\gamma 2}}`$ observe that we have (we denote all constant factors depending on $`\gamma `$ by $`C`$)

$`{\displaystyle \underset{|k_1|>2|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k_1|^{2\gamma 2}}}C{\displaystyle _{|k_1|>2|k|}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k_1|^{2\gamma 2}}}d^dk_1=C{\displaystyle _{2|k|}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^{2\gamma 2}}}r^d𝑑r=`$
$`C{\displaystyle _{2|k|}^{\mathrm{}}}r^{(2\gamma 2d+1)}=C|k|^{2\gamma 2d}`$
Observe that we used here the assumption $`\gamma >1+\frac{d}{2}`$, which guarantees that $`2\gamma 2d+1>1`$ so the integral converges.

Hence for the case III we obtain

$$\mathrm{}\frac{\sqrt{V_0}DC}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}}}$$
(25)
Adding cases I,II,III we obtain for $`d3`$

$$|\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{C\sqrt{V_0}D}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}}}$$
(26)
For $`d=2`$ we obtain

$$|\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\frac{C\sqrt{V_0}D}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{d}{2}ϵ}}$$
(27)
###### Lemma 3

Assume that $`\gamma >d`$, then

$$\underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}\frac{1}{|k_1|^\gamma |kk_1|^\gamma }\frac{C_Q(d,\gamma )}{|k|^\gamma }$$
(28)
Proof: We consider three cases.

Case I. $`|k_1|<\frac{|k|}{2}`$, hence $`|kk_1|\frac{|k|}{2}`$.

We have

$$\underset{|k_1|<\frac{|k|}{2}}{}\underset{|k_1|<\frac{|k|}{2}}{}\frac{1}{k_1^\gamma }\frac{2^\gamma }{|k|^\gamma }<\frac{2^\gamma }{|k|^\gamma }C_1^{\mathrm{}}\frac{r^{d1}}{r^\gamma }𝑑r$$

The improper integral $`_1^{\mathrm{}}\frac{r^{d1}}{r^\gamma }𝑑r`$ converges, because $`\gamma >d`$.

Hence

$$\underset{|k_1|<\frac{|k|}{2}}{}<\frac{C_I(d,\gamma )}{|k|^\gamma }$$

Case II. $`\frac{|k|}{2}<|k_1|2|k|`$.

$`{\displaystyle \underset{\frac{|k|}{2}<|k_1|2|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{2^\gamma }{|k|^\gamma }}{\displaystyle \underset{\frac{|k|}{2}<|k_1|2|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|kk_1|^\gamma }}<`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{2^\gamma }{|k|^\gamma }}{\displaystyle \underset{|k_1|3|k|}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k_1|^\gamma }}<{\displaystyle \frac{2^\gamma }{|k|^\gamma }}C{\displaystyle _1^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{r^{d1}}{r^\gamma }}𝑑r`$
Hence

$$\underset{\frac{|k|}{2}<|k_1|2|k|}{}<\frac{C_{II}(d,\gamma )}{|k|^\gamma }$$

Case III. $`2|k|<|k_1|`$, hence $`|kk_1|>|k|`$.

$$\underset{2|k|<|k_1|}{}<\frac{1}{|k|^\gamma }\frac{1}{|k_1|^\gamma }<\frac{C_{III}(d,\gamma )}{|k|^\gamma }$$

### 3.1 The construction of the trapping region I.

We take $`V_0>V^{}`$, $`\gamma 2.5`$ and $`K`$ such that $`f_k=0`$ for $`|k|>K`$. We set

$$N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)=\left\{\{u_k\}\right|V(\{u_k\})V_0,|u_k|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma },|k|>K\}$$
(29)
We prove that

###### Theorem 4

Let $`d=2`$ and $`C(\gamma )`$ be a constant from lemma 2. If $`K>\frac{C^2V_0}{\nu ^2}`$ and $`D>\sqrt{V_0}K^{\gamma 1}`$, then $`N=N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ is a trapping region for each Galerkin projection.

Proof: Observe that for $`D\sqrt{V_0}K^{\gamma 1}`$ for all $`\{u_k\}N`$ holds

$$|u_k|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }.$$
(30)
To prove this observe that (30) holds for $`|k|>K`$ by the definition of $`N`$. For $`|k|K`$ we proceed as follows: since $`V(\{u_k\})V_0`$ then $`|k|^2|u_k|^2V_0`$. So we have

$$|u_k|\frac{\sqrt{V_0}}{|k|}\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma },|k|K$$
(31)
for $`D`$ such that $`\sqrt{V_0}|k|^{\gamma 1}D`$ for all $`|k|K`$.

We will show now that on the boundary of $`N`$ (we are considering the Galerkin projection) the vector field is pointing inside. For points $`V(\{u_k\})=V_0`$ it follows from (11). For points such that $`u_k=\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }`$ for some $`|k|>K`$ we have from lemma 2 (with $`ϵ=1/2`$)

$$\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}\frac{C\sqrt{V_0}D}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{3}{2}}}\nu |k|^2\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }<0,$$
(32)
which is satisfied when

$$C\sqrt{V_0}<\nu |k|^{1/2}.$$
(33)
Observe that (33) holds for $`|k|K`$ if $`K>\frac{C^2V_0}{\nu ^2}`$.

###### Remark 1

Observe that in the proof it was of crucial importance that the constant $`D`$ entered linearly in the estimate in lemma 2 and due to this fact did not appear in (33). For example assume that the estimate of the nonlinear part will be of the form $`\frac{D^2C}{|k|^{\gamma \frac{3}{2}}}`$ then instead of (33) we will have

$$CD<\nu |k|^{1/2}$$

which will require that $`K>\frac{C^2D^2}{\nu ^2}`$, which might be incompatible with $`D>\sqrt{V_0}K^{\gamma 1}`$.

This shows how important it was to use the enstrophy in these estimates.

### 3.2 The construction of the trapping region II - exponential decay

###### Theorem 5

Assume that $`\gamma 2.5`$, $`d=2`$. Then the set

$$N_e=N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)\left\{\{u_k\}\right||u_k|\frac{D_2}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|}\text{for }|k|>K_e\},$$
(34)
where $`N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ is a trapping region from theorem 4, $`D_2>D`$, $`K_e>\frac{C_Q(d,\gamma )D_2}{\nu }`$ ($`C_Q`$ was obtained in lemma 3) and $`0<a<\frac{1}{K_e}\mathrm{ln}\frac{D_2}{D}`$ is a trapping region for each Galerkin projection.

Proof: The set $`N_e`$ constructed so that for all $`|k|K_e`$ the trapping (the vector field is pointing toward the interior of $`N_e`$ on the boundary) is obtained from $`N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ and for $`|k|>K_e`$ it results from the new exponential estimates.

Observe that $`a`$ is such that $`\frac{D_2}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|}>\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }`$ for all $`|k|K_e`$. This solves the trapping for $`|k|K_e`$.

Hence to prove the trapping it is enough to consider the boundary points such that $`|u_k|=\frac{D_2}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|}`$ for some $`k>K_e`$. For such a point and $`|k|`$ we have

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d|u_k|}{dt}}\left|{\displaystyle }(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}\right|\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
$`{\displaystyle |u_{k1}||k||u_{|kk_1|}|}\nu |k|^2|u_k|D_2^2|k|{\displaystyle \frac{e^{a|k_1|}e^{a|kk_1|}}{|k_1|^\gamma |kk_1|^\gamma }}\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
Observe that $`e^{a|k_1|}e^{a|kk_1|}e^{a|k|}`$. From this and lemma 3 we obtain

$$\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}<\frac{D_2^2C_Q(\gamma ,d)}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}e^{a|k|}\nu |k|^2|u_k|$$

Hence $`\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}<0`$, when

$$|u_k|=\frac{D_2}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|}>\frac{C_QD_2^2}{\nu |k|^{\gamma +1}}e^{a|k|}$$

Which is equivalent to

$$|k|>K_e=\frac{C_QD_2}{\nu }.$$

### 3.3 Trapping region III - exponential decay in time

###### Theorem 6

Let $`t_0>0`$. Assume that $`\gamma 2.5`$, $`d=2`$. Then the set

$$N_e=N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)\left\{\{u_k\}\right||u_k|\frac{D_3}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a_3|k|t}\text{for }|k|>K_e\},$$
(35)
where $`N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ is a trapping region from theorem 4, $`D_3>D`$, $`K_e>\frac{D_3C_Q(d,\gamma )}{\nu }`$ ($`C_Q`$ was obtained in lemma 3) and $`0<a_3<\frac{1}{K_et_0}\mathrm{ln}\frac{D_3}{D}`$ is a trapping region for each Galerkin projection for $`0tt_0`$.

Proof: The set $`N_e`$ constructed so that for all $`|k|K_e`$ the trapping is obtained from $`N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ and for $`|k|>K_e`$ it results from the new exponential estimates.

To be sure that the boundary of $`N_e`$ for $`|k|<K_e`$ is obtained from
$`N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D)`$ we require that

$$\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }<\frac{D_3}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a_3|k|t},\text{for }0tt_0\text{ and }|k|K_e.$$
(36)
Easy computations show that (36) holds iff $`a_3<\frac{1}{K_et_0}\mathrm{ln}\frac{D_3}{D}`$.

To have the trapping for $`|k|>K_e`$ we need to show that$`\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}<0`$ if $`|u_k|=\frac{D_3}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a_3t}`$, for some $`0tt_0`$ and $`|k|>K_e)`$.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d|u_k|}{dt}}{\displaystyle |u_{k_1}||k||u_{kk_1}|}\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
$`|k|D_3^2{\displaystyle \frac{e^{a_3|k_1|t}e^{a_3|kk_1|t}}{|k_1|^\gamma |kk_1|^\gamma }}\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
$`|k|e^{a_3|k|t}D_3^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|k_1|^\gamma |kk_1|^\gamma }}\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{a_3|k|t}D_3^2C_Q(d,\gamma )}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}}\nu |k|^2|u_k|`$
Hence $`\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}<0`$ if

$$\frac{D_3^2C_Q(d,\gamma )}{\nu |k|^{\gamma +1}}e^{a_3|k|t}<|u_k|=\frac{D_3}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a_3|k|t},$$
(37)
which is equivalent to

$$\frac{D_3C_Q}{\nu }<|k|.$$
(38)
Hence for $`K_e\frac{D_3C_Q}{\nu }`$ we obtain the trapping.

## 4 Passing to the limit for Galerkin projections via Ascoli-Arzela lemma

The goal of this section is a relatively simple argument for the passing to the limit with Galerkin projections.

All what follows was essentially proved in \[ZM\]. We will also use some conventions used there.

Let $`H`$ be a Hilbert space. Let $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2,\mathrm{}`$ be a orthonormal basis in $`H`$.

Let $`A_n:HH`$ be denote the projection onto 1-dimensional subspace $`\varphi _n`$, i.e $`x=A_n(x)\varphi _n`$ for all $`xH`$. By $`V_n`$ we will denote the space spanned by $`\{\varphi _1,\mathrm{},\varphi _n\}`$. Let $`P_n`$ denote the projection onto , $`Q_n=IP_n`$.

###### Definition 2

Let $`WH`$ and $`F:\text{dom}(H)H`$. We say that $`W`$ and $`F`$ satisfy conditions C1,C2,C3 if

There exists $`M0`$, such that $`P_n(W)W`$ for $`kM`$

Let $`\widehat{u_k}=\mathrm{max}_{xW}|A_kx|`$. Then, $`\widehat{u}=\widehat{u_k}H`$. In particular, $`|\widehat{u}|<\mathrm{}`$.

The function $`xF(x)`$ is continuous on $`W`$. The sequence $`f=\{f_k\}`$, given by $`f_k=\mathrm{max}_{xW}|A_kF(x)|`$ is in $`H`$. In particular, $`|f|<\mathrm{}`$.

Observe that condition C2 implies that the set $`W`$ is compact. Conditions C2 and C3 guarantee good behavior of $`F`$ with respect to passage the limit. We have here continuous function on the compact set, this is also perfect setting for study the dynamics of $`x^{}=F(x)`$ (see \[ZM\] for more details).

###### Lemma 7

Assume that $`WH`$ and $`F`$ satisfy C1,C2,C3. Let $`x:[0,T]W`$ be such that for each $`n`$

$$\frac{dA_nx}{dt}=A_n(F(x)).$$
(39)
Then

$$x^{}=F(x).$$
(40)
Proof: Let us set $`x_k=A_kx`$. Let us fix $`ϵ>0`$ and $`t[0,T]`$. For any $`n`$ we have

$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{x(t+h)x(t)}{h}}F(x)\right|\left|{\displaystyle \frac{P_nx(t+h)P_nx(t)}{h}}P_nF(x)\right|+`$ (41)
$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{1}{h}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=n+1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(x_k(t+h)x_k(t))\varphi _k\right|+|Q_nF(x)|`$ (42)
We will estimate the three terms on the right hand side separately. From C3 it follows for a given $`ϵ>0`$ there exists $`n_0`$ such that $`n>n_0`$ implies

$$\left|Q_n(F(a))\right|<ϵ/3.$$

From now on fix $`n>n_0`$. Again C3 and the mean value theorem implies

$`\left|{\displaystyle \underset{k=n+1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{h}}(x_k(t+h)x_k(t))\varphi _k\right|`$ $`=`$ $`\left|{\displaystyle \underset{k=n+1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dx_k}{dt}}(t+\theta _kh)\varphi _k\right|`$
$``$ $`\left|{\displaystyle \underset{k=n+1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}f_k\varphi _k\right|<ϵ/3.`$
Finally, for $`h`$ sufficiently small,

$$\left|\frac{1}{h}(P_nx(t+h)P_nx(t))\varphi _kP_nF(x)\right|<ϵ/3$$

and hence the desired limit is obtained.

###### Lemma 8

Assume that $`WH`$ and the function $`F`$ satisfy C1,C2,C3. Let $`x_0W`$. Assume that for each $`n`$ a function $`x_n:[0,T]P_n(W)`$ is a solution of the problem (Galerkin projection of $`x^{}=F(x)`$)

$$x_n^{}=P_n(F(x)),x_n(0)=P_n(x_0).$$
(43)
Assume also that $`x_n`$ converges uniformly to $`x^{}:[0,T]W`$.

Then $`x^{}`$ solves the following initial value problem

$$x^{}=F(x),x(0)=x_0$$
(44)
Proof: We show first that for all $`n`$ and $`t[0,T]`$ holds

$$P_nx^{}(t)=P_nx_0+_0^tP_nF(x^{}(s))𝑑s.$$
(45)
Let us fix $`n`$. Observe that for each $`mn`$ the following equation holds

$$P_nx_m(t)=P_nx_0+_0^tP_nF(x_m(s))𝑑s$$
(46)
Since the series $`x_m`$ converges uniformly to $`x^{}`$, then also $`P_nx_m`$ converges uniformly to $`P_nx^{}`$. Observe that also the functions $`P_nF(x_m)`$ converge uniformly to $`P_nF(x^{})`$ as the composition of the uniformly continuous function $`P_nF`$ (because F is a continuous function on the compact set $`W`$) with a uniformly convergent sequence, hence also the integral in (46) is converging (uniformly in $`t[0,T]`$) to $`_0^tP_nF(x^{}(s))`$. This proves (45). Differentiation of (45) gives

$$\frac{dP_nx^{}}{dt}=P_nF(x^{}).$$
(47)
The assertion follows from lemma 7

###### Theorem 9

Assume that $`WH`$ and the function $`F`$ satisfy C1,C2,C3. Let $`x_0W`$. Assume that for each $`n`$ a function $`x_n:[0,T]P_n(W)`$ is a solution of the problem (Galerkin projection of $`x^{}=F(x)`$)

$$x_n^{}=P_n(F(x)),x_n(0)=P_n(x_0).$$
(48)
Then there exists $`x^{}:[0,T]W`$, such that $`x^{}`$ solves the following initial value problem

$$x^{}=F(x),x(0)=x_0$$
(49)
Proof: The idea goes as follows, we would like to pickup a convergent subsequence from $`\{x_n\}`$ using Ascoli-Arzela compactness theorem. Later we show that the limit function $`x^{}`$ solves (49).

Observe first that due to compactness of $`W`$ and since $`x_n(t)W`$ for $`t[0,T]`$ the sequence $`\{x_n\}`$ is contained in a compact set. Observe that the derivatives $`x_n^{}(t)`$ are uniformly bounded by $`|F(W)|`$, hence the sequence of functions $`x_n`$ is equicontinuous. From Ascoli-Arzela theorem if follows that there exists a subsequence converging uniformly to $`x^{}:[0,T]W`$. Without loss of generality we can assume that the whole sequence $`x_n`$ is converging uniformly to $`x^{}`$. It is obvious that $`x^{}(0)=x_0`$. The assertion of the theorem follows from lemma 8.

## 5 Passing to the limit, an analytic argument

The goal of this section is to present another argument for the limit of Galerkin projections. Compared to section 4 we assume more about the function $`F`$ and we add a new condition D on the trapping regions, which are satisfied for the Navier-Stokes system and the trapping regions constructed in section 3. We obtain better results about convergence plus uniqueness and Lipschitz constants for the induced flow.

We will use here the notations introduced in section 4. We investigate the Galerkin projections of the following problem

$$x^{}=F(x)=L(x)+N(x),$$
(50)
where $`L`$ is a linear operator and $`N`$ is a nonlinear part of F. We assume that the basis $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2,\mathrm{}`$ of $`H`$ is build from eigenvectors of $`L`$. We assume that the corresponding eigenvalues $`\lambda _k`$ (i.e. $`L\varphi _k=\lambda _k\varphi _k`$) can ordered so that

$$\lambda _1\lambda _2\mathrm{},\text{and}\underset{k\mathrm{}}{lim}\lambda _k=\mathrm{}.$$

Hence we can have only a finite number of positive eigenvalues.

### 5.1 Estimates based on logarithmic norms

The goal of this section is to recall some results about one-sided Lipschitz constants of the flows induced by ODE’s. We will invoked here results from \[HNW\].

###### Definition 3

\[HNW, Def. I.10.4\] Let $`Q`$ be a square matrix, then we call

$$\mu (A)=\underset{h>0,h0}{lim}\frac{I+hQ1}{h}$$

the logarithmic norm of $`Q`$.

###### Theorem 10

\[HNW, Th. I.10.5\] The logarithmic norm is obtained by the following formulas

* for Euclidean norm

$$\mu (Q)=\text{the largest eigenvalue of }1/2(Q+Q^T).$$
* for max norm $`x=\mathrm{max}_k|x_k|`$

$$\mu (Q)=\underset{k}{\mathrm{max}}\left(q_{kk}+\underset{ik}{}|q_{ki}|\right)$$
* for norm $`x=_k|x_k|`$

$$\mu (Q)=\underset{i}{\mathrm{max}}\left(q_{ii}+\underset{ki}{}|q_{ki}|\right)$$

Consider now the differential equation

$$x^{}=f(x),fC^1.$$
(51)
Let $`\phi (t,x_0)`$ we denote the solution of equation (51) with the initial condition $`x(0)=x_0`$. By $`x`$ we denote a fixed arbitrary norm in $`\text{}^n`$.

The following theorem was proved in \[HNW, Th. I.10.6\] (for nonautonoumous ODE, here we restrict ourselves to an autonomous case only and we use a different notation)

###### Theorem 11

Let $`y:[0,T]\text{}^n`$ and $`\phi (,x_0)`$ is defined for $`t[0,T]`$. Suppose that we have the following estimates

$`\mu \left({\displaystyle \frac{f}{x}}(\eta )\right)l(t),\text{ for }\eta [y(t),x(t)]`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dy}{dt}}(t)f(y(t))\delta (t),y(0)x_0\rho .`$
Then for $`0tT`$ we have

$$\phi (t,x_0)y(t)e^{L(t)}\left(\rho +_0^te^{L(s)}\delta (s)𝑑s\right),$$

where $`L(t)=_0^tl(s)𝑑s`$.

From the above theorem one easily derives the following

###### Lemma 12

Let $`y:[0,T]\text{}^n`$ and $`\phi (,x_0)`$ is defined for $`t[0,T]`$. Suppose that $`Z`$ is a convex set such that we have the following estimates

$`y([0,T]),\phi ([0,T],x_0)Z`$
$`\mu \left({\displaystyle \frac{f}{x}}(\eta )\right)l,\text{ for }\eta Z`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dy}{dt}}(t)f(y(t))\delta ,y(0)x_0\rho .`$
Then for $`0tT`$ we have

$$\phi (t,x_0)y(t)e^{lt}\rho +\delta \frac{e^lt1}{l},\text{if }l0.$$

For $`l=0`$ we have

$$\phi (t,x_0)y(t)\rho +\delta t.$$

### 5.2 Application to Galerkin projections - uniqueness and another proof of convergence

###### Definition 4

We say that $`WH`$ and $`F=N+L`$ satisfy condition D if the following condition holds

there exists $`l\text{}`$ such that for all $`k=1,2,\mathrm{}`$

$$1/2\underset{i=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left|\frac{N_k}{x_i}\right|(W)+1/2\underset{i=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left|\frac{N_i}{x_k}\right|(W)+\lambda _kl$$
(52)
The main idea behind the condition D is the ensure that the logarithmic norms for all Galerkin projections are uniformly bounded.

###### Theorem 13

Assume that $`WH`$ and $`F`$ satisfy conditions C1,C2,C3,D and $`W`$ is convex. Assume that $`P_n(W)`$ is a trapping region for the $`n`$-dimensional Galerkin projection of (50) for all $`n>M_1`$. Then

Uniform convergence and existence For a fixed $`x_0W`$, let $`x_n:[0,\mathrm{}]P_n(W)`$ be a solution of $`x^{}=P_n(F(x))`$, $`x(0)=P_nx_0`$. Then $`x_n`$ converges uniformly on compact intervals to a function $`x^{}:[0,\mathrm{}]W`$, which is a solution of (50) and $`x^{}(0)=x_0`$

Uniqueness within $`W`$. There exists only one solution of the initial value problem (50), $`x(0)=x_0`$ for any $`x_0W`$, such that $`x(t)W`$ for $`t>0`$.

Lipschitz constant. Let $`x:[0,\mathrm{}]W`$ and $`y:[0,\mathrm{}]W`$ be solutions of (50), then

$$|y(t)x(t)|e^{lt}|x(0)y(0)|$$

Semidynamical system. The map $`\phi :\text{}_+\times WW`$, where $`\phi (,x_0)`$ is a unique solution of equation (50), such that $`\phi (0,x_0)=x_0`$ defines a semidynamical system on $`W`$, namely

* $`\phi `$ is continuous
* $`\phi (0,x)=x`$
* $`\phi (t,\phi (s,x))=\phi (t+s,x)`$

Proof: By $`|x|_n`$ we will denote $`|P_n(x)|`$, i.e. Euclidean norm in $`\text{}^n`$.

Let

$$\delta _n=\underset{xW}{\mathrm{max}}|P_n(F(x))P_n(F(P_nx))|.$$

Obviously $`\delta _n0`$ for $`n\mathrm{}`$, because $`F`$ is uniformly continuous on $`W`$ and $`P_nWW`$, for $`nM`$.

Let us consider the logarithmic norm of the vector field for the $`n`$-dimensional Galerkin projection. We will estimate it using the euclidean norm on $`P_nH=\text{}^n`$(which coincides with the norm inherited from $`H`$). Since

$$\left[\frac{P_n(L+N)}{(x_1\mathrm{}x_n)}\right]_{ij}=\frac{N_i}{x_j}+\delta _{ij}\lambda _j,$$
(53)
we need to estimate the largest eigenvalue of the following matrix, $`Q_n(x)`$ for $`xP_n(W)`$,

$$Q_{n,ij}(x)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{N_i}{x_j}(x)+\frac{1}{2}\frac{N_j}{x_i}(x)+\delta _{ij}\lambda _j,\text{for }i,j=1,\mathrm{},n$$
(54)
where $`\delta _{ij}`$ is a Kronecker symbol, i.e. $`\delta _{ij}=1`$, if $`i=j`$ and $`\delta _{ij}=0`$ otherwise.

To estimate the largest eigenvalue of $`Q_n`$ we will use the Gershgorin theorem (see \[QSS, Property 5.2\]), which states that all eigenvalues of a square $`n\times n`$-matrix $`A`$, $`\sigma (A)`$, satisfy

$$\sigma (A)_{j=1}^n\{z\text{}:|zA_{jj}|<\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i=1,ij}|A_{ij}|\}.$$
(55)
From above equation and condition D it follows immediately that eigenvalues of $`Q_n`$ are less then or equal to $`l_n`$, where

$$l_n=\underset{k=1,\mathrm{},n}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{xP_nW}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\left(1/2\left|\frac{N_k}{x_i}(x)\right|+1/2\left|\frac{N_i}{x_k}(x)\right|\right)+\lambda _k.$$
(56)
From the assumption D, it follows that we have uniform bound on $`l_n`$, namely

$$l_nl,\text{for all }n.$$
(57)
Let us take $`mn`$. Let $`x_n:[0,T]P_nW`$ and $`x_m:[0,T]P_mW`$ be the solutions of $`n`$\- and $`m`$-dimensional projections of (50). From lemma 12 it follows immediately that (we treat here $`P_nx_m`$ as a perturbed ’solution’ $`y`$)

$$|x_n(t)P_n(x_m(t))|_ne^{lt}|x_n(0)P_nx_m(0)|+\delta _n\frac{e^{lt}1}{l}$$
(58)
To prove uniform convergence of $`\{x_n\}`$ starting from the same initial condition observe that

$`|x_n(t)x_m(t)||x_n(t)P_n(x_m(t))|_n+|(IP_n)x_m(t)|`$
$`\delta _n{\displaystyle \frac{e^{lt}1}{l}}+|(IP_n)x_m(t)|\delta _n{\displaystyle \frac{e^{lT}1}{l}}+|(IP_n)W|`$
This shows that $`\{x_n\}`$ is a Cauchy sequence in $`𝒞([0,T],H)`$, hence it converges uniformly to $`x^{}:[0,T]W`$. From lemma 8 it follows that $`\frac{dx^{}}{dx}=F(x)`$.

Uniqueness. Let $`x:[0,T]W`$ be a solution of (50) with the initial condition $`x(0)=x_0`$. We will show that $`x_n`$ converge to $`x`$. We apply lemma 12 to $`n`$-dimensional projection and the function $`P_nx(t)`$. We obtain

$$|x_n(t)P_n(x(t))|_n\delta _n\frac{e^{lt}1}{l}.$$
(59)
Since the tail $`(IP_n)x(t)`$ is uniformly bounded we see that $`x_nx`$ uniformly.

Lipschitz constant on $`W`$. From equation (58) applied to $`m=n`$ for different initial conditions (we denote the functions by $`x_n`$ and $`y_n`$ and the initial conditions $`x_0`$ and $`y_0`$) we obtain

$$|x_n(t)y_n(t)|e^{lt}|P_nx_0P_ny_0|+\delta _n\frac{e^{lt}1}{l}$$
(60)
Let $`x_nx`$ and $`y_ny`$. Then passing to the limit in (60) gives

$$|x(t)y(t)|e^{lt}|x_0y_0|.$$
(61)
Assertion 4 follows easily from from the previous ones.

## 6 Existence theorems for Navier-Stokes system in 2D

### 6.1 Some easy lemmas about Fourier series

###### Lemma 14

Let $`uC^n(\text{𝕋}^d,\text{})`$ and let $`u_k`$ for $`k\text{}^d`$ be a Fourier coefficient of $`u`$. Then there exists $`M`$

$$|u_k|\frac{M}{|k|^n}$$

###### Lemma 15

Assume that $`|u_k|\frac{M}{|k|^\gamma }`$ for $`k\text{}^d`$. Let $`n\text{}`$ be such that $`\gamma n>d`$, then the function $`u(x)=_{k\text{}^d}u_ke^{ikx}`$ belongs to $`C^n(\text{𝕋}^d,\text{})`$. The series

$$\frac{^su}{x_{i_1}\mathrm{}x_{i_s}}=\underset{k\text{}^d}{}u_k\frac{^s}{x_{i_1}\mathrm{}x_{i_s}}e^{ikx}$$

converge uniformly for $`0sn`$.

###### Lemma 16

Assume that for some $`\gamma >0`$, $`a>0`$ and $`D>0`$ we have $`|u_k|\frac{De^{a|k|}}{|k|^\gamma }`$ for $`k\text{}^d\{0\}`$.

Then the function $`u(x)=_{k\text{}^d}u_ke^{ikx}`$ is analytic.

Let $`H=\{\{u_k\}|_{k\text{}^d}|u_k|^2<\mathrm{}\}`$. Obviously $`H`$ is a Hilbert space. Let $`F`$ be the right side of (8)

$$F(u)_k=i\underset{k_1}{}(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}\nu k^2u_k+_kf_k$$
(62)
For a general $`uH`$ we cannot claim that $`F(u)H`$. But when $`|u_k|`$ decreases fast enough we have the following

###### Lemma 17

Let $`W(D,\gamma )=\left\{uH\right||u_k|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }\}`$, then

if $`\gamma >\frac{d}{2}`$, then $`W(D,\gamma )`$ satisfies condition C2.

if $`\gamma 2>\frac{d}{2}`$ and $`\gamma >d`$, then the function $`F:W(D,\gamma )H`$ is continuous and condition C3 is satisfied on $`W(D,\gamma )`$.

if $`\gamma >d+1`$, then condition D is satisfied on $`W(D,\gamma )`$.

Proof: To prove assertion 1 it is enough to show that $`W(d,\gamma )`$ is bounded, closed (obvious) and is is componentwise bounded by some $`v=\{v_k\}`$, such that $`vH`$. We set $`v_k=\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }`$. Observe that $`vH`$, because

$$\underset{k\text{}^d}{}|v_k|^2CD^2\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{n^{d1}}{n^{2\gamma }}$$
(63)
and the series converge when $`2\gamma (d1)>1`$. This concludes the proof of assertion 1.

To prove assertion 2 we can assume that $`f=0`$ (it is just a constant vector in $`H`$). From lemma 3 if follows immediately that for $`uW`$ we obtain

$$|F(u)_k|\frac{C}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}+\frac{\nu D}{|k|^{\gamma 2}}\frac{B}{|k|^{\gamma 2}}.$$

Hence $`F(u)W(B,\gamma 2)H`$, when $`\gamma 2>\frac{d}{2}`$. Hence $`F(W(D,\gamma ))W(B,\gamma 2)`$. Since the convergence in $`W(B,\gamma 2)`$ is equivalent to componentwise convergence, the same holds for the continuity. It is obvious that $`F(u)_k`$ continuous on $`W(d,\gamma )`$, because the series defining it is uniformly convergent, hence $`F`$ is continuous on $`W(d,\gamma )`$.

We prove now assertion 3. Observe that

$$\frac{N_k}{u_{k_1}}=(|k)_ku_{kk_1}+(u_{kk_1}|k)_k$$
(64)
We will treat here $`u_k`$ as one dimensional object, but the argument is generally correct, i.e. treating $`u_k`$ as a vector will introduce only an additional constant and will not affect the proof. We estimate

$$\left|\frac{N_k}{u_{k_1}}\right|(W)\frac{2D|k|}{|kk_1|^\gamma }$$
(65)
Hence the sum, $`S(k)`$, appearing in condition D can be estimated as follows

$`S(k)=1/2{\displaystyle \underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{N_k}{u_{k_1}}}\right|(W)+1/2{\displaystyle \underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{N_{k_1}}{u_k}}\right|(W)`$
$`D|k|{\displaystyle \underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|kk_1|^\gamma }}+D{\displaystyle \underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|^\gamma }}`$
Now observe that

$$\underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}\frac{1}{|kk_1|^\gamma }<\underset{k_1\text{}^d,k_10}{}\frac{1}{|k|^\gamma }=C(d,\gamma )<\mathrm{},\text{ for }\gamma >d$$
(66)
To estimate the sum $`_{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}\frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|^\gamma }`$ we show that there exists a constant $`A`$, such that

$$\frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|}<A|k|,\text{for }k,k_1\text{}^d\{0\}\text{}kk_1.$$
(67)
Observe that for $`|k_1|2|k|`$, $`k_10`$, $`k_1k`$ we can estimate the denominator by $`1`$ hence we have

$$\frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|}2|k|.$$
(68)
For $`|k_1|>2|k|`$ we have

$$\frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|}=\frac{1}{\left|\frac{k_1}{|k_1|}\frac{k}{|k_1|}\right|}\frac{1}{1\frac{|k|}{|k_1|}}2.$$
(69)
So we can take $`A=2`$.

Now we make the following estimate

$$\underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}\frac{|k_1|}{|kk_1|^\gamma }A|k|\underset{k_1\text{}^d\{0,k\}}{}\frac{1}{|kk_1|^{\gamma 1}}<AC(d,\gamma 1)|k|,$$
(70)
provided $`\gamma 1>d`$.

So we have $`S(k)<\left(DC(d,\gamma )+ADC(d,\gamma 1)\right)|k|`$ and since $`\lambda _k=\nu |k|^2`$, we see that $`l`$ satisfying condition D exists.

### 6.2 Existence theorems

We set the dimension $`d=2`$. We again assume that the force $`f`$ is such that $`f_k=0`$ for $`|k|>K`$ (in \[MS\]) more general force is treated.

Observe that from lemma 17 it follows that to have conditions C1, C2, C3, D on the trapping regions constructed in section 3 we need $`\gamma >3`$.

###### Theorem 18

If for some $`D`$ and $`\gamma >3`$

$$|u_k(0)|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }$$
(71)
then the solution of (8) is defined for all $`t>0`$ and there exists a constant $`D^{}`$, such that

$$|u_k(t)|\frac{D^{}}{|k|^\gamma },t>0.$$
(72)
The following theorem tells that if we start with analytic initial conditions that the solution will remain analytic (in space variables).

###### Theorem 19

If for some $`D`$, $`\gamma >3`$ and $`a>0`$

$$|u_k(0)|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|}$$
(73)
then the solution of (8) is defined for all $`t>0`$ and there exist constants $`D^{}`$ and $`a^{}>0`$ such that

$$|u_k(t)|\frac{D^{}}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a^{}|k|},t>0$$
(74)
Next theorem states that the solution starting from regular initial conditions becomes analytic immediately.

###### Theorem 20

Assume that for some $`D`$, $`\gamma >3`$ and $`a>0`$ the initial conditions satisfy

$$|u_k(0)|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }$$
(75)
then the solution of (8) is defined for all $`t>0`$ and and for any $`t_0>0`$ one can find constants $`D^{}`$ and $`a^{}>0`$ such that

$$|u_k(t_0)|\frac{D^{}}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a^{}|k|}$$
(76)
Proof of theorem 18: Observe first that the enstrophy of $`\{u_k(0)\}`$ is finite. Let take $`V_0>\mathrm{max}(V(\{u_k\}),V^{})`$. From theorem 4 it follows that there exists $`K`$ and $`D^{}`$, such that $`\{u_k(0)\}`$ belongs to the trapping set $`N=N(V_0,K,\gamma ,D^{})`$. Observe that $`NW(D^{},\gamma )`$, hence we can pass to the limit with solutions obtained from Galerkin projections (see theorem 13).

Proof of theorem 19: The proof is essentially the same as for theorem 18, the only difference is: we use theorem 5 instead of theorem 4.

Proof of theorem 20: The global existence was proved in theorem 18. To prove the estimate for $`|u_k(t_0)|`$ we use theorem 6 to obtain

$$|u_k(t_0)|\frac{D^{}}{|k|^\gamma }e^{a|k|t_0},$$
(77)
which finishes the proof.

###### Theorem 21

$`d=2`$. If $`u_0C^5`$ then the classical solution of NS equations such that $`u(0,x)=u_0(x)`$ exists for all $`t>0`$ and it is analytic in space variables for $`t>0`$.

Proof: From lemma 14 it follows that the Fourier coefficients of $`u_0`$, $`\{u_{0,k}\}`$, satisfy assumptions of the theorem 18 with $`\gamma =5`$. Hence there exists a solution, $`\{u_k(t)\}`$, of (8) in $`H`$, such that $`u_k(0)=u_{0,k}`$.

Let us set $`u(t,x)=_{k\text{}^2\{0\}}u_k(t)e^{ikx}`$. It is easy to see that $`u(t,x)`$ is a classical solution of the Navier-Stokes system, because the Fourier series for all terms in the NS equations converge fast enough (compare proof of lemma 7).

From the theorem 20 and lemma 16 it follows that the function $`u(t_0,)`$ is analytic in space variables for any $`t_0>0`$.

The following theorem is an easy consequence of theorem 13.

###### Theorem 22

Assume $`d=2`$ and $`\gamma >3`$. Let $`W`$ be any of the trapping regions defined in theorems 4 and 5, then the Navier-Stokes system induces a semidynamical system on $`W`$.

## 7 Trapping regions in 3D

The goal of this section is to present method by Sannikov and Kaloshin \[S\] for constructing a trapping region for small initial data.

Let us state a result, which is not contained in \[S\], but can be easily obtained using the technique presented there.

We set the dimension $`d=3`$. We assume the force $`f`$ is zero.

###### Theorem 23

For any $`\gamma >3.5`$, there exists $`D_0=D_0(\gamma ,\nu )`$ such that for all $`D<D_0`$, if

$$|u_k(0)|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }$$
(78)
then the solution of (8) is defined for all $`t>0`$ and

$$|u_k(t)|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma },t>0$$
(79)
Proof: Let

$$W=\left\{\{u_k\}\right||u_k|\frac{D}{|k|^\gamma }\}.$$
(80)
From lemma 3 it follows that for $`\{u_k\}W`$ we have

$$\frac{d|u_k|}{dt}|(u_{k_1}|k)_ku_{kk_1}|\nu |k|^2|u_k|\frac{D^2C_Q(3,\gamma )}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}\nu |k|^2|u_k|.$$
(81)
Hence $`W`$ is a trapping region if for every $`k`$ we have

$$\frac{D^2C_Q(3,\gamma )}{|k|^{\gamma 1}}\frac{\nu D}{|k|^{\gamma 2}}<0.$$
(82)
We obtain

$$\frac{DC_Q(3,\gamma )}{\nu }<|k|,k\text{}^3\{0\}.$$
(83)
Hence if

$$D<D_0=\frac{\nu }{C_Q(3,\gamma )},$$
(84)
then $`W`$ is a trapping region for all projections of the Navier Stokes equations. From lemma 17 it follows that the conditions C1,C2,C3 are satisfied (it is easy to see that condition D holds if $`\gamma >4`$.) Hence we can pass to the limit with the dimension of Galerkin projection to obtain a desired solution.

One can easily state similar theorem for analytic initial condition.

Let us comment on the Sannikov and Kaloshin result \[S\]. They constructed the trapping region of the form $`|u_k|\frac{D}{|}k|^2e^{v|k|t}`$, $`t0`$, where $`v>0`$. The methods developed in this paper require more compactness at $`t=0`$ to be directly applicable to this trapping region.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Recently, detailed measurements on the $`K^+`$ meson production in proton-proton collisions have been performed in the previously unexplored near threshold region of the reaction channels $`pppK^+\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`pppK^+\mathrm{\Sigma }^0`$ . On the other hand, there is a lack of data on the elementary $`K^{}`$ meson production in the proton-proton scattering, especially in the region of low excess energies. The reaction channel with the lowest threshold energy is given by the associated $`K^+K^{}`$ meson pair production via the reaction channel $`ppppX`$, $`X`$ = $`K^+K^{}`$. Therefore, measurements on the threshold production of negatively charged kaons (m($`K^\pm `$) = 493.677 MeV/c2 ) have to be carried out in the mass range of m(X) $``$ 1 GeV/c2. A study of this mass range is stimulated by the continuing discussion on the nature of the scalar resonances f0(980) and a0(980), which have been interpreted as conventional $`q\overline{q}`$ states , $`qq`$-$`\overline{q}\overline{q}`$ states  or as $`K\overline{K}`$ molecules . In the latter case the possibility of a $`K\overline{K}`$ molecule interpretation of the f0(980) particle crucially depends on the strength of the $`K\overline{K}`$ interaction, which can be probed in the near threshold production of kaon-antikaon pairs .
Exclusive $`K^{}`$ production data are also of special interest in the context of sub-threshold kaon production experiments in nucleus-nucleus interactions, which are expected to probe the antikaon properties at high baryon density. Recent inclusive sub-threshold measurements  resulted in comparable $`K^+`$ and $`K^{}`$ yields at the same energy per nucleon below the production thresholds for the elementary reactions $`ppK^\pm X`$. To explain this observation, different models  consider repulsive and attractive interactions of kaons and antikaons within the nuclear medium, respectively. In addition, the antikaon potential in dense nuclear matter is closely related to open questions in astrophysics . However, for detailed calculations on the medium effects a precise knowledge of the elementary $`K^+`$ and $`K^{}`$ cross sections close to the production thresholds is needed.
We now present the first measurement of an absolute cross section on the close to threshold $`K^+K^{}`$ meson pair production via the reaction channel $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ at an excess energy of Q = 17 MeV , i.e. below the $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ meson threshold. Angular distributions of final state particles and particle subsystems are included. In addition, one upper limit at an excess energy of Q = 3 MeV is reported (see also ).
The excitation function is generally expected to follow the four-body phase space volume modified by the proton-proton interaction. Final state interactions in the nucleon-kaon, nucleon-antikaon or kaon-antikaon subsystems as well as influences of the scalar resonances $`f_0(980)`$ and $`a_0(980)`$ on $`K\overline{K}`$ production might lead to deviations from this expectation.

## 2 Experiment

Measurements on the reaction $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ have been performed at the internal beam facility COSY-11  at COSY-Jülich , using a hydrogen cluster target  in front of a C-shaped COSY-dipole magnet, acting as a magnetic spectrometer. Tracks of positively charged particles, detected in a set of two drift chambers (DC1 and DC2 in Fig. 1), are traced back through the magnetic field to the interaction point, leading to a momentum determination. The velocities of these particles are accessible by a time-of-flight path behind the drift chambers, consisting of two scintillation hodoscopes (start detectors S1 and S2) followed by a large scintillation wall (S3) at a distance of $``$ 9.3 m, acting as a stop detector. The overall time-of-flight resolution for events with two identified protons has been determined to be $``$330 ps . By measuring the momentum and the velocity, a particle identification of positively charged ejectiles via the reconstructed mass determination is possible and the four momentum vector can be completely determined.
The event selection for the reaction $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ was performed by accepting three-track events with two identified protons and one particle identified as a $`K^+`$ meson. With respect to the short lifetime and the opening angle of kaons in the laboratory system, an indirect time-of-flight measurement was used for the kaon identification. By calculating the start time of the event in the target via the precisely determined proton trajectories and velocities, the kaon hit in the start detectors is used as stop signal. The quality of this method is demonstrated in Fig. 2 with a clearly identified kaon peak.
The four-momentum determination of the positively charged ejectiles yields a full event reconstruction for the reaction type $`ppppK^+X`$ and allows an identification of the undetected X-particle system using the missing mass method. The result of the measurements at an excess energy of Q = 17 MeV with respect to the $`K^+K^{}`$ threshold is shown in Fig. 3 (upper spectrum, thin line). As expected from Monte-Carlo simulations using the code GEANT-3 , including the phase-space event generator GENBOD, a sharp peak at the charged kaon mass with a missing mass resolution of FWHM $``$ 2 MeV/c2 is obvious, corresponding to an unambiguous detection of events from the $`ppK^+K^{}`$ reaction. The broad distribution in the region of lower missing masses can be explained by contributions from $`pppp\pi ^+X`$ events, misidentifying pions as $`K^+`$ mesons. Furthermore, the production of heavier hyperons, in particular $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^0(1385)`$, may contribute to this background. At the discussed beam energy these hyperons can be produced via the reactions $`pppK^+\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)/\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}(1385)`$. Taking into account decay channels with one decay proton in the final state, these events can also show the requested signature of two protons and one $`K^+`$. However, due to the decay modes of these hyperons, here the system $`X`$ of the reaction $`ppppK^+X`$ consists of more than only one particle. Therefore, the missing mass distribution of the $`ppK^+`$ system originating from these reaction channels results in a broad distribution.
In order to reproduce the observed broad missing mass distribution, both mentioned contributions have been considered. For this purpose, $`pppp\pi ^+X`$ events have been analyzed, assuming for the $`\pi ^+`$ mesons the mass of charged kaons. Furthermore, using for simplicity only S-waves, phase space Monte-Carlo simulations on the hyperon production, applying the properties of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^0(1385)`$ hyperon (mass m = 1383.7 MeV/c2, width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 36 MeV/c2 ) and isotropic angular distributions have been carried out. The combination of both contributions can be seen in Fig. 3 (thick line). Obviously, these two effects, the misidentification of $`pp\pi ^+X`$ events and the production of heavier hyperons, are sufficient to reproduce the background distribution. It should be emphasized that the background contamination in the $`K^{}`$ peak area is in any case very small, leading finally to a total number of N = 61$`{}_{5}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0}`$ accumulated $`K^+K^{}`$ events.
For a further verification of the $`K^+K^{}`$ assignment, a silicon pad detector, mounted inside the COSY dipole magnet, has been used to determine the hit position of outgoing $`K^{}`$ mesons. Since the four-momentum vector of the $`K^{}`$ meson is accessible via the completely determined $`ppK^+`$ system, the hit position in the silicon pad detector can be predicted. Taking into account only events of the $`K^{}`$ peak of Fig. 3 (upper spectrum), the expected hit positions are compared with the measured ones, as seen in Fig. 4 (filled symbols). The upright dash-dotted lines indicate the region of the silicon pad detector, which can be hit by $`K^{}`$ mesons originating from the $`K^+K^{}`$ production at Q = 17 MeV excess energy. Based on Monte-Carlo simulations, the dashed lines specify the 3$`\sigma `$ region for the deviation of the measured hit position from the calculated one ($``$ $`\pm `$ 13.7 cm). Obviously, except for one event all events marked by filled symbols fulfill these requirements, giving additional and independent evidence for the exclusive $`K^{}`$ production. Contrary to this, events from the broad structure of Fig. 3 show no correlation between the measured and expected hit positions (open symbols). Due to geometrical acceptance only a few of these events have a hit in the pad detector at all.
Taking into account only $`ppK^+`$ events with an additional $`K^{}`$ candidate fulfilling the $`K^{}`$ hit correlation (Fig. 4), the primary missing mass distribution of $`ppK^+`$ events reduces to the lower spectrum of Fig. 3. This procedure leads, consistent with Monte-Carlo calculations to i) a drastic reduction of the broad structure and ii) to a 43% decrease of the counting rate for the $`K^{}`$ signal due to acceptance and decay losses. According to these results, the events represented by the $`K^{}`$ peaks can be identified as $`ppK^+K^{}`$ events with hardly any background contamination.

## 3 Results

In the following analysis we use the events of the $`K^{}`$ peak of the upper spectrum of Fig. 3.
In addition to the non-resonant production of $`K^+K^{}`$ events, we also consider the possibility, that the selected events originate from other reaction channels leading to the same final state particles. As discussed above, the production of heavy hyperons like the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)`$ and the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}(1385)`$ is of minor importance, since it appears only as a small background below a clear $`K^+K^{}`$ signal (see Fig. 3). Different to this it is more difficult to unravel the contribution of the scalar resonances $`f_0(980)`$ and/or $`a_0(980)`$ from which the higher energy part of these broad resonances might decay into $`K^+K^{}`$ pairs . Due to the masses of the $`f_0`$\- and $`a_0`$-resonances (m($`f_0`$) = 980 MeV/c2 $`\pm `$ 10 MeV/c2 and m($`a_0`$) = 984.8 MeV/c2 $`\pm `$ 1.4 MeV/c2) and their large widths ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$($`f_0`$) = 40 MeV/c2 to 100 MeV/c2 and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$($`a_0`$) = 50 MeV/c2 to 100 MeV/c2) , kinematical distributions of both the resonant and the non-resonant channels are expected to be similar. The shape of the $`pp`$-missing mass distribution is sensitive to the assumed reaction channel and therefore offers the possibility to investigate contributions from resonant production. However, the available statistics of the extracted $`K^+K^{}`$ events at Q = 17 MeV is not sufficient to distinguish between four-body phase space and predictions on the resonant production. Since the structures of the $`a_0`$(980) and $`f_0`$(980) are rather similar with respect to their effect concerning the limited acceptance of COSY-11, we only consider the $`f_0`$(980) in the further discussion.
The accessibility of the four-momentum vectors of all ejectiles from $`ppK^+K^{}`$ events allows to study angular distributions of the particles or particle systems. Monte-Carlo simulations on the free $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ reaction, considering also the $`pp`$ FSI and the Coulomb interaction, have been performed to determine the acceptance of the detection system in order to obtain acceptance corrected kinematical distributions. The overall detection efficiencies for events from the non-resonant $`K^+K^{}`$ production, requiring the detection of both protons and the $`K^+`$ meson, were determined to be $`ϵ`$(3 MeV) = $`6.410^2_{28\%}^{+43\%}`$ and $`ϵ`$(17 MeV) = $`7.410^3_{13\%}^{+10\%}`$. These quantities take into account the kaon decay, detection and track reconstruction efficiencies as well as the influence of the error in the absolute excess energies, which are known with a precision of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Q = 1 MeV, caused by the uncertainty in the determination of the absolute COSY beam momentum ($`\mathrm{\Delta }p/p`$ = $`10^3`$). In Fig. 5 angular distributions in the center of mass system relative to the beam direction are shown for the extracted $`ppK^+K^{}`$ events for both outgoing protons (a), the $`K^+K^{}`$ system (b), the $`K^+`$ mesons (c) and the $`K^{}`$ mesons (d). Within the statistical errors the measured distributions of the protons and the kaons show no significant deviation from an isotropic emission.
The luminosity was determined by comparing the differential counting rates of elastically scattered protons with data obtained by the EDDA collaboration . The integrated luminosities were extracted to be $`L𝑑t`$ = 841 nb$`{}_{}{}^{1}\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\%`$ (stat.)$`\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}\%`$ (syst.) at Q = 3 MeV and $`L𝑑t`$ = 4.50 pb$`{}_{}{}^{1}\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\%`$ (stat.)$`\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}\%`$ (syst.) at Q = 17 MeV, corresponding to a mean luminosity of $`L`$ = 2 $`10^{30}`$ cm-2 s-1.
In Fig. 6 the present result at Q = 17 MeV (filled symbol) and a data point from the DISTO collaboration , neglecting the contribution from $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, are plotted as function of the excess energy. These data represent the available world data for the $`K^+K^{}`$ production via the reaction channel $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ in the near threshold region (threshold: pbeam = 3.30175 GeV/c).
The total cross section at an excess energy of Q = 17$`\pm `$ 1 MeV has been determined to be $`\sigma `$ = (1.80 $`\pm `$ 0.27$`{}_{0.35}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.28}`$) nb, including statistical and systematical errors, respectively . The overall systematical error arises from uncertainties in the determination of the detection efficiency (8%), the luminosity (5%), the COSY beam momentum ($`{}_{6}{}^{+10}\%`$) as well as different models for the proton-proton FSI  (2%). From each of the four angular distributions in Fig. 5 the total cross section was deduced and resulted in an additional error contribution of $`{}_{16\%}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+5\%}`$ where the influence of the few background counts in the $`K^{}`$ peak is included. The upper limit at Q = 3 MeV has been determined to be $`\sigma `$ $`<`$ 0.16 nb on the basis of a confidence level of 95% . Additionally, Fig. 6 shows parametrizations on the $`K^+K^{}`$ cross sections assuming different production processes. The solid line, representing a fit to the data points on the basis of a four-body S-wave phase space expectations including the proton-proton final state interaction (FSI), describes the data points adequately within the error bars. Therefore, the total cross section data points are consistent with a description based on the free $`ppK^+K^{}`$ production with no distinct effects of higher partial waves or strong $`K^+K^{}`$ final state interactions. Although not suggested by our previously discussed results, one can calculate the cross section for the $`ppppf_0(980)ppK^+K^{}`$ channel, leading to a value of $`\sigma (ppppf_0ppK^+K^{})=1.84\pm 0.29_{0.33}^{+0.25}`$ nb. Correspondingly, the dashed lines present three-body phase space calculations for the $`ppK^+K^{}`$ final state via the excitation of the broad $`f_0`$ resonance including the $`pp`$ FSI and normalized to this $`\sigma (ppppf_0ppK^+K^{})`$. Here we assumed the $`f_0(980)`$ to be a Breit-Wigner distribution with a mass of m = 980 MeV/c2. The effect of the large uncertainty about the width of the $`f_0`$(980) resonance ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 40 MeV/c2 to 100 MeV/c2 ) is indicated by the dashed area. Nevertheless, within the error bars also this description is consistent with the measured data. Consequently, the two data points are in agreement with both the assumption of a non-resonant as well as a resonant production via the $`f_0`$, always neglecting effects of higher partial waves.

## 4 Summary

At the COSY-11 facility the near threshold $`K^+K^{}`$ production in the reaction channel $`ppppK^+K^{}`$ has been studied at an excess energy of Q = 17 MeV. Approximately sixty $`K^+K^{}`$ events have been extracted, leading to a total cross section of $`\sigma `$ = 1.80 nb. As a remarkable result we obtain, at same excess energies, a $`K^{}`$ cross section differing from the $`K^+`$ cross section by approximately two orders of magnitude.
The emission angle distributions of the ejectiles in the center of mass system show no significant deviation from expectations based on pure four body phase space simulations. The excitation function of available close to threshold data on this reaction channel can be described both by calculations based on the four-body phase space including effects of the $`pp`$ FSI and the Coulomb interaction as well as by calculations based on three-body phase space considerations via the broad $`f_0`$ resonance including the $`pp`$ FSI.

Acknowledgements
We appreciate the work provided by the COSY operating team and thank them for the good cooperation and for delivering an excellent proton beam. We also thank C. Hanhart for valuable discussions on the reaction mechanism of the $`K^+K^{}`$ production. The research project was supported in part by the BMBF (06MS881I), the Bilateral Cooperation between Germany and Poland represented by the Internationales Büro DLR for the BMBF (PL-N-108-95) and by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research, and by the FFE grants (41266606 and 41266654) from the Forschungszentrum Jülich.