Energy rigidity and weak-strong uniqueness for the 2D anisotropic Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

In two dimensions, we show that dissipation in one spatial direction is sufficient to enforce the energy equality for every weak solution at the natural energy level. In particular, neither anomalous energy loss nor creation can occur. The main difficulty is that the missing directional regularity prevents the usual self-testing argument. We overcome this obstruction through two observations: The pressure is square-integrable by a directional Riesz-transform estimate, and the less regular component is still a renormalized solution. As an application of energy rigidity, we derive a weak-strong uniqueness principle.