On the derivation of the wave kinetic equation for NLS

Abstract

A fundamental question in wave turbulence theory is to understand how the "wave kinetic equation" (WKE) describes the long-time dynamics of its associated nonlinear dispersive equation. Formal derivations in the physics literature date back to the work of Pieirls in 1928. For the cubic nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, it is expected that such a kinetic description should hold, in a limiting regime where the size $L$ of the domain goes to infinity, and the strength $\alpha$ of the nonlinearity goes to 0 (weak nonlinearity), at a kinetic time scale $T_{\mathrm{kin}}=O(\alpha^{-2})$. In this paper, we study the rigorous justification of this monumental statement, and show that the answer seems to depend on the particular "scaling law" in which the $(\alpha, L)$ limit is taken, in a spirit similar to how the Boltzmann-Grad scaling law is imposed in the derivation of Boltzmann's equation. In particular, there appears to be two favorable scaling laws: when $\alpha$ approaches $0$ like $L^{-\varepsilon+}$ or like $L^{-1-\frac{\varepsilon}{2}+}$ (for arbitrary small $\varepsilon$), we exhibit the wave kinetic equation up to timescales $O(T_{\mathrm{kin}}L^{-\varepsilon})$, by showing that the relevant Feynman diagram expansions converge absolutely (as a sum over paired trees). For the other scaling laws, we justify the onset of the kinetic description at timescales $T_*\ll T_{\mathrm{kin}}$, and identify specific interactions that become very large for times beyond $T_*$. In particular, the relevant tree expansion diverges absolutely there. In light of those interactions, extending the kinetic description beyond $T_*$ towards $T_{\mathrm{kin}}$ for such scaling laws seems to require new methods and ideas.