Sensitivity of steady states in a degenerately-damped stochastic Lorenz system

Abstract: We study stability of solutions for a randomly driven and degenerately damped version of the Lorenz '63 model. Specifically, we prove that when damping is absent in one of the temperature components, the system possesses a unique invariant probability measure if and only if noise acts on the convection variable. On the other hand, if there is a positive growth term on the vertical temperature profile, we prove that there is no normalizable invariant state. Our approach relies on the derivation and analysis of non-trivial Lyapunov functions which ensure positive recurrence or null-recurrence/transience of the dynamics.