Spectral gap for the stochastic primitive equations under degenerate Brownian forcing

Abstract

We prove a weighted Wasserstein spectral gap for the three-dimensional primitive equations on $\mathscr E=\{u\in H^1\cap L^8: \partial_zu\in L^4\}$ under finite-rank additive Brownian forcing that is phase-complete finite Fourier and satisfies a quantitative quadratic saturation condition. In particular, four real forcing directions suffice and this number is optimal within the phase-complete class. Consequently, the system is uniquely ergodic and exponentially mixing in the $H^1$ topology. The main difficulties stem from the lack of sufficiently strong moment bounds and the highly degenerate nature of the noise, placing the problem outside the direct reach of standard methods. We introduce a new quantitative stable--compact asymptotic coupling criterion that captures the delicate balance between the available control of the growth of initial perturbations and the accuracy--cost of compensating them by perturbing the noise. For the primitive equations, this leads to a quantitative infinite-dimensional H\"ormander analysis requiring tracking the degree and coefficient cost of Lie-bracket polynomials with the Fourier frequency.