Global controllability of Boussinesq flows by using only a temperature control

Abstract: We show that buoyancy driven flows can be steered in an arbitrary time towards any state by applying as control only an external temperature profile in a subset of small measure. More specifically, we prove that the 2D incompressible Boussinesq system on the torus is globally approximately controllable via physically localized heating or cooling. In addition, our controls have an explicitly prescribed structure; even without such structural requirements, large data controllability results for Boussinesq flows driven merely by a physically localized temperature profile were so far unknown. The presented method exploits various connections between the model's underlying transport-, coupling-, and scaling mechanisms.