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Clément Mouhot

Publications and source records attributed to Clément Mouhot.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Döblin--Fourier cancellation and kinetic Aleksandrov estimates

We develop a cancellation mechanism for linear second-order kinetic equations in non-divergence form with measurable uniformly elliptic coefficients. We decompose the dynamics into spatial waves and follow two families of velocity paths along which the waves acquire nearly opposite phases. The parabolic Krylov--Safonov theory gives a common lower bound for the two velocity marginals. The corresponding contributions cancel up to a small phase error, producing a contraction \textit{à la Döblin}. Iterating this contraction yields exponential Fourier decay estimates with enhanced dissipation. We then present two applications. The first contribution is a kinetic Aleksandrov estimate: a maximum principle in which the source is measured in an $L^p$ norm. For rough coefficients $A(t,v)$ independent of position, we obtain the estimate for every $p>2n+1$, where $n$ is the dimension of position and velocity. The Fourier decay also gives spatial smoothness, and parabolic regularity gives Hölder continuity in time and velocity. For autonomous coefficients $a(x,v)$ in dimension one, position serves as time away from zero velocity. A Harnack comparison controls returns to small velocity intervals and yields the estimate for every $p>4$. Both thresholds are optimal among those valid for all ellipticity ratios. The second contribution concerns position on the torus and velocity on the sphere, with measurable uniformly elliptic diffusion coefficients $A(t,v)$ independent of position. We prove enhanced dissipation with the optimal square-root frequency power and Gevrey regularity in position. For autonomous coefficients $A=A(v)$, we also obtain exponential convergence to equilibrium in $L^2$ weighted by the invariant velocity measure, and a quantitative spectral gap. To our knowledge, these are the first results on decay established for laws of kinetic equations with rough coefficients.

math.AP↗

Poincaré inequality and quantitative De Giorgi method for hypoelliptic operators

We propose a systematic approach based on trajectories to prove a Poincaré inequality for weak non-negative sub-solutions to hypoelliptic equations with an arbitrary number of Hörmander commutators, both in the local and in the non-local case. As a consequence, we deduce the weak Harnack inequality and Hölder regularity along the line of the De Giorgi method.

math.AP↗

Optimal decay rates for linear kinetic equations in the half-space

We prove that solutions to linear kinetic equations in a half-space with absorbing boundary conditions decay for large times like $t^{-\frac{1}{2}-\frac{d}{4}}$ in a weighted $\sfL^{2}$ space and like $t^{-1-\frac{d}{2}}$ in a weighted $\sfL^{\infty}$ space, i.e., faster than in the whole space and in agreement with the decay of solutions to the heat equation in the half-space with Dirichlet conditions. The class of linear kinetic equations considered includes the linear relaxation equation, the kinetic Fokker-Planck equation and the Kolmogorov equation with spherical velocities associated with the kinetic Brownian motion.

math.AP↗

Introduction to quantitative De Giorgi methods

The theory of De Giorgi (1958) and Nash (1959) solves Hilbert's 19th problem and constitutes a major advance in the analysis of PDEs in the 20th century. This theory concerns the Hölder regularity of solutions to elliptic and parabolic equations with non-regular coefficients, and it was extended by Moser (1960) to include the Harnack inequality. This course reviews the classical De Giorgi method in the elliptic and parabolic cases and introduces its recent extension to hypoelliptic equations which appear naturally in kinetic theory. The simplest case is the Kolmogorov equation with a rough diffusion coefficients matrix in the kinetic variable. We present compactness arguments but emphasize the recently developed quantitative methods based on the construction of trajectories. These lecture notes are self-contained and can be used as a general introduction to the topic.

math.AP↗

Critical trajectories in kinetic geometry

We construct critical trajectories in kinetic geometry, i.e. curves in $\mathbb{R}^{1+2n}$ that are: tangential to the vector fields $\partial_t+v\cdot \nabla_x$ and $\nabla_v$, connecting any two given points, respecting the underlying kinetic scaling, and with the property, that the singularity of the $v$-tangent vector near the starting point equates the degeneracy of the dependency of the curve velocity in terms of the endpoint velocity. The construction is based on Newton's laws of motion, where the ansatz for the forcing of the kinetic trajectory is the superposition of functions combining the correct power scaling with desynchronised logarithmic oscillations. These critical trajectories provide a robust and versatile ''almost exponential map'' that allows to prove several functional analytic estimates. We introduce a notion of kinetic mollification and, as an application, deduce the kinetic Sobolev inequality with optimal exponent without relying on the fundamental solution. Moreover, we establish a universal estimate for the logarithm of positive supersolutions to the Kolmogorov equation with rough coefficients inspired by the work of Moser (1961, 1964) on elliptic and parabolic problems. Combining this estimate with De Giorgi-Moser iterations and a lemma due to Bombieri and Giusti, we give an alternative proof of the (weak) Harnack inequality for the Kolmogorov equation with rough coefficients, following the ideas of Moser (1971). Our result gives the optimal range of exponents in the weak Harnack inequality and the optimal (geometric) dependency of the Harnack constant on the bounds of the diffusion matrix.

math.AP↗

Control of Instability in a Vlasov-Poisson System Through an External Electric Field

Plasma instabilities are a major concern in plasma science, for applications ranging from particle accelerators to nuclear fusion reactors. In this work, we consider the possibility of controlling such instabilities by adding an external electric field to the Vlasov--Poisson equations. Our approach to determining the external electric field is based on conducting a linear analysis of the resulting equations. We show that it is possible to select external electric fields that completely suppress the plasma instabilities present in the system when the equilibrium distribution and the perturbation are known. In fact, the proposed strategy returns the plasma to its equilibrium with a rate that is faster than exponential in time. We further perform numerical simulations of the nonlinear two-stream and bump-on-tail instabilities to verify our theory and to compare the different strategies that we propose in this work.

physics.plasm-ph↗

A consistency-stability approach to scaling limits of zero-range processes

We propose a simple quantitative method for studying the hydrodynamic limit of interacting particle systems on lattices. It is applied to the diffusive scaling of the symmetric Zero-Range Process (in dimensions one and two). The rate of convergence is estimated in a Monge-Kantorovich distance asymptotic to the L^1 stability estimate of Kruzkhov, as well as in relative entropy; and it is uniform in time. The method avoids the use of the so-called ``block estimates''. It is based on a modulated Monge-Kantorovich distance estimate and microscopic stability properties.

math.PR↗

Gehring's Lemma for kinetic Fokker-Planck equations

In this article, we establish a "Gehring lemma" for a real function satisfying a reverse Hölder inequality on all "kinetic cylinders" contained in a large one: it asserts that the integrability degree of the function improves under such an assumption. The kinetic cylinders are derived from the non-commutative group of invariances of the Kolmogorov equation. Our contributions here are (1) the extension of Gehring's Lemma to this kinetic (hypoelliptic) scaling used to generate the cylinders, (2) the localisation of the lemma in this hypoelliptic context (using ideas from the elliptic theory), (3) the streamlining of a short and quantitative proof. We then use this lemma to establish that the velocity gradient of weak solutions to linear kinetic equations of Fokker-Planck type with rough coefficients have Lebesgue integrability strictly greater than two, while the natural energy estimate merely ensures that it is square integrable. Our argument here is new but relies on Poincaré-type inequalities established in previous works.

math.AP↗

Special macroscopic modes and hypocoercivity

We study linear inhomogeneous kinetic equations with an external confining potential and a collision operator admitting several local conservation laws (local density, momentum and energy). We classify all special macroscopic modes (stationary solutions and time-periodic solutions). We also prove the convergence of all solutions of the evolution equation to such non-trivial modes, with a quantitative exponential rate. This is the first hypocoercivity result with multiple special macroscopic modes with constructive estimates depending on the geometry of the potential.

math.AP↗

Quantitative fluid approximation in fractional regimes of transport equations with more invariants

We present an extension of results in a previous paper by the first and the last author [PMP, 2022] about macroscopic limits of linear kinetic equations in (potentially) fractional regimes. More precisely, we develop a unified framework inspired by Ellis and Pinsky [J. Math. Pures Appl., 1975] for operators that preserve mass, momentum and energy, and have microscopic equilibrium with heavy tails (typically polynomial). This paper also generalizes one of Hittmeir and Merino [KRM, 2016] in a related framework. The main difficulty, that leads to our main contribution, is the understanding of the spectrum of the generator in the Fourier space, which is significantly complicated by the lack of spectral gap and the fat tails of the equilibrium. Indeed, the scaling of the eigenelements in the suitable macroscopic rescaling is subtle to handle. In particular, our study uncovered an interesting difference in scaling in the fractional regime, where the transversal wave eigenvalues converge faster to zero than the Boussinesq and acoustic wave eigenvalues.

math.AP↗

Concentration in an advection-diffusion model with diffusion coefficient depending on the past trajectory

We consider a drift-diffusion model, with an unknown function depending on the spatial variable and an additional structural variable, the amount of ingested lipid. The diffusion coefficient depends on this additional variable. The drift acts on this additional variable, with a power-law coefficient of the additional variable and a localization function in space. It models the dynamics of a population of macrophage cells. Lipids are located in a given region of space; when cells pass through this region, they internalize some lipids. This leads to a problem whose mathematical novelty is the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the past trajectory. We discuss global existence and blow-up of the solution.

math.AP↗

Quantitative Geometric Control in Linear Kinetic Theory

We consider general linear kinetic equations combining transport and a linear collision on the kinetic variable with a spatial weight that can vanish on part of the domain. The considered transport operators include external potential forces and boundary conditions, e.g. specular, diffusive and Maxwell conditions. The considered collision operators include the linear relaxation (scattering) and the Fokker-Planck operators and the boundary conditions include specular, diffusive and Maxwell conditions. We prove quantitative estimates of exponential stabilisation (spectral gap) under a geometric control condition. The argument is new and relies entirely on trajectories and weighted functional inequalities on the divergence operators. The latter functional inequalities are of independent interest and imply quantitatively weighted Stokes and Korn inequalities. We finally show that uniform control conditions are not always necessary for the existence of a spectral gap when the equation is hypoelliptic, and prove weaker control conditions in this case.

math.AP↗

A consistence-stability approach to hydrodynamic limit of interacting particle systems on lattices

This is a review based on the presentation done at the seminar Laurent Schwartz in December 2021. It is announcing results in the forthcoming [Menegaki-Mouhot-Marahrens'22]. This work presents a new simple quantitative method for proving the hydrodynamic limit of a class of interacting particle systems on lattices. We present here this method in a simplified setting, for the zero-range process and the Ginzburg-Landau process with Kawasaki dynamics, in the parabolic scaling and in dimension $1$. The rate of convergence is quantitative and uniform in time. The proof relies on a consistence-stability approach in Wasserstein distance, and it avoids the use of the ``block estimates''.

math.PR↗

Quantitative fluid approximation in transport theory: a unified approach

We propose a unified method for the large space-time scaling limit of \emph{linear} collisional kinetic equations in the whole space. The limit is of \emph{fractional} diffusion type for heavy tail equilibria with slow enough decay, and of diffusive type otherwise. The proof is constructive and the fractional/standard diffusion matrix is obtained. The method combines energy estimates and quantitative spectral methods to construct a `fluid mode'. The method is applied to scattering models (without assuming detailed balance conditions), Fokker-Planck operators and L{é}vy-Fokker-Planck operators. It proves a series of new results, including the fractional diffusive limit for Fokker-Planck operators in any dimension, for which the formulas for the diffusion coefficient were not known, for L{é}vy-Fokker-Planck operators with general equilibria, and for scattering operators including some cases of infinite mass equilibria. It also unifies and generalises the results of previous papers with a quantitative method, and our estimates on the fluid approximation error also seem novel.

math.AP↗

Trajectorial hypocoercivity and application to control theory

We present the quantitative method of the recent work arXiv:2209.09340 in a simple setting, together with a compactness argument that was not included in arXiv:2209.09340 and has interest per se. We are concerned with the exponential stabilization (spectral gap) for linear kinetic equations with degenerate thermalization, i.e. when the collision operator vanishes on parts of the spatial domain. The method in arXiv:2209.09340 covers both scattering and Fokker-Planck type operators, and deals with external potential and boundary conditions, but in these notes we present only its core argument and restrict ourselves to the kinetic Fokker-Planck in the periodic torus with unit velocities and a thermalization degeneracy. This equation is not covered by the previous results of Bernard and Salvarani (2013), Han-Kwan and Léautaud (2015), Evans and Moyano (arXiv:1907.12836).

math.AP↗

Quantitative De Giorgi methods in kinetic theory

We consider hypoelliptic equations of kinetic Fokker-Planck type, also known as Kolmogorov or ultraparabolic equations, with rough coefficients in the drift-diffusion operator. We give novel short quantitative proofs of the De Giorgi intermediate-value Lemma as well as weak Harnack and Harnack inequalities. This implies H{ö}lder continuity with quantitative estimates. The paper is self-contained.

math.AP↗

Weighted Korn and Poincaré-Korn inequalities in the Euclidean space and associated operators

We prove functional inequalities on vector fields on the Euclidean space when it is equipped with a bounded measure that satisfies a Poincaré inequality, and study associated self-adjoint operators. The weighted Korn inequality compares the differential matrix, once projected orthogonally to certain finite-dimensional spaces, with its symmetric part and, in an improved form of the inequality, an additional term. We also consider Poincaré-Korn inequalities for estimating a projection of the vector field by the symmetric part of the differential matrix and zeroth-order versions of these inequalities obtained using the Witten-Laplace operator. The constants depend on geometric properties of the potential and the estimates are quantitative and constructive. These inequalities are motivated by kinetic theory and related with the Korn inequality (1906) in mechanics, on a bounded domain.

math.AP↗

The Schauder estimate in kinetic theory with application to a toy nonlinear model

This article is concerned with the Schauder estimate for linear kinetic Fokker-Planck equations with Hölder continuous coefficients. This equation has an hypoelliptic structure. As an application of this Schauder estimate, we prove the global well-posedness of a toy nonlinear model in kinetic theory. This nonlinear model consists in a non-linear kinetic Fokker-Planck equation whose steady states are Maxwellian and whose diffusion in the velocity variable is proportional to the mass of the solution.

math.AP↗