An equivalence of moment closure and nonlinear variational approximation of the Fokker-Planck equation for dilute polymeric flow

Abstract

We establish rigorously the equivalence between classical moment closure and a nonlinear variational approximation of the Fokker-Planck equation for dilute polymeric flow in the linearized Hookean spring chain setting. The variational formulation is based on the Dirac-Frankel principle applied to a Gaussian approximation manifold endowed with the Fisher-Rao information metric. We show that the invariance of this manifold under the linear configurational dynamics yields an exact evolution for the macroscopic conformation tensor, recovering the classical diffusive Oldroyd-B closure. While the equivalence only holds in the linearized setting, the associated variational framework provides an abstract error representation and a starting point for the systematic construction of reduced approximation schemes for polymeric flows with nonlinear forcing laws.