arXiv subjects

Clément Mouhot

Publications and source records attributed to Clément Mouhot.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

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.

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arXiv2020

Gaussian lower bounds for the Boltzmann equation without cut-off

The study of positivity of solutions to the Boltzmann equation goes back to Carleman (1933), and the initial argument of Carleman was developed byPulvirenti-Wennberg (1997), the second author and Briant (2015). The appearance of a lower bound with Gaussian decay had however remained an open question for long-range interactions (the so-called non-cutoff collision kernels). We answer this question and establish such Gaussian lower bound for solutions to the Boltzmann equation without cutoff, in the case of hard and moderately soft potentials, with spatial periodic conditions, and under the sole assumption that hydrodynamic quantities (local mass, local energy and local entropy density) remain bounded. The paper is mostly self-contained, apart from the uniform upper bound on the solution established by the third author (2016).

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arXiv2019

Hypocoercivity without confinement

In this paper, hypocoercivity methods are applied to linear kinetic equations with mass conservation and without confinement, in order to prove that the solutions have an algebraic decay rate in the long-time range, which the same as the rate of the heat equation. Two alternative approaches are developed: an analysis based on decoupled Fourier modes and a direct approach where, instead of the Poincaré inequality for the Dirichlet form, Nash's inequality is employed. The first approach is also used to provide a simple proof of exponential decay to equilibrium on the flat torus. The results are obtained on a space with exponential weights and then extended to larger function spaces by a factorization method. The optimality of the rates is discussed. Algebraic rates of decay on the whole space are improved when the initial datum has moment cancellations.

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arXiv2019

Decay estimates for large velocities in the Boltzmann equation without cutoff

We consider solutions $f=f(t,x,v)$ to the full (spatially inhomogeneous) Boltzmann equation with periodic spatial conditions $x \in \mathbb T^d$, for hard and moderately soft potentials \emph{without the angular cutoff assumption}, and under the \emph{a priori} assumption that the main hydrodynamic fields, namely the local mass $\int\_v f(t,x,v)$ and local energy $\int\_v f(t,x,v)|v|^2$ and local entropy $\int\_v f(t,x,v) \ln f(t,x,v)$, are controlled along time. We establish quantitative estimates of \emph{propagation} in time of "pointwise polynomial moments", i.e. $\sup\_{x,v} f(t,x,v) (1+|v|)^q$, $q \ge 0$. In the case of hard potentials, we also prove \emph{appearance} of these moments for all $q \ge 0$. In the case of moderately soft potentials we prove the \emph{appearance} of low-order pointwise moments.

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arXiv2018

De Giorgi-Nash-Moser and H{ö}rmander theories: new interplay

We report on recent results and a new line of research at the crossroad of two major theories in the analysis of partial differential equations. The celebrated De Giorgi-Nash-Moser theory shows H{ö}lder estimates and the Harnack inequality for uniformly elliptic or parabolic equations with rough coefficients in divergence form. The theory of hypoellipticity of H{ö}rmander shows, under general "bracket" conditions, the regularity of solutions to partial differential equations combining first and second order derivative operators when ellipticity fails in some directions. We discuss recent extensions of the De Giorgi-Nash-Moser theory to hypoelliptic equations of Kolmogorov (kinetic) type with rough coefficients. These equations combine a first-order skew-symmetric operator with a second-order elliptic operator involving derivatives in only certain variables, and with rough coefficients. We then discuss applications to the Boltzmann and Landau equations in kinetic theory and present a program of research with some open questions.

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arXiv2017

Exponential decay to equilibrium for a fibre lay-down process on a moving conveyor belt

We show existence and uniqueness of a stationary state for a kinetic Fokker-Planck equation modelling the fibre lay-down process in the production of non-woven textiles. Following a micro-macro decomposition, we use hypocoercivity techniques to show exponential convergence to equilibrium with an explicit rate assuming the conveyor belt moves slow enough. This work is an extension of (Dolbeault et al., 2013), where the authors consider the case of a stationary conveyor belt. Adding the movement of the belt, the global Gibbs state is not known explicitly. We thus derive a more general hypocoercivity estimate from which existence, uniqueness and exponential convergence can be derived. To treat the same class of potentials as in (Dolbeault et al., 2013), we make use of an additional weight function following the Lyapunov functional approach in (Kolb et al., 2013).

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arXiv2017

Harnack inequality for kinetic Fokker-Planck equations with rough coefficients and application to the Landau equation

We extend the De Giorgi--Nash--Moser theory to a class of kinetic Fokker-Planck equations and deduce new results on the Landau-Coulomb equation. More precisely, we first study the H{ö}lder regularity and establish a Harnack inequality for solutions to a general linear equation of Fokker-Planck type whose coefficients are merely measurable and essentially bounded, i.e. assuming no regularity on the coefficients in order to later derive results for non-linear problems. This general equation has the formal structure of the hypoelliptic equations "of type II" , sometimes also called ultraparabolic equations of Kolmogorov type, but with rough coefficients: it combines a first-order skew-symmetric operator with a second-order elliptic operator involving derivatives along only part of the coordinates and with rough coefficients. These general results are then applied to the non-negative essentially bounded weak solutions of the Landau equation with inverse-power law $γ$ $\in$ [--d, 1] whose mass, energy and entropy density are bounded and mass is bounded away from 0, and we deduce the H{ö}lder regularity of these solutions.

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arXiv2016

Long time behavior in locally activated random walks

We consider a 1-dimensional Brownian motion whose diffusion coefficient varies when it crosses the origin. We study the long time behavior and we establish different regimes, depending on the variations of the diffusion coefficient: emergence of a non-Gaussian mul-tipeaked probability distribution and a dynamical transition to an absorbing static state. We compute the generator and we study the partial differential equation which involves its adjoint. We discuss global existence and blow-up of the solution to this latter equation.

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arXiv2015

Existence of self-accelerating fronts for a non-local reaction-diffusion equations

We describe the accelerated propagation wave arising from a non-local reaction-diffusion equation. This equation originates from an ecological problem, where accelerated biological invasions have been documented. The analysis is based on the comparison of this model with a related local equation, and on the analysis of the dynamics of the solutions of this second model thanks to probabilistic methods.

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arXiv2015

Hypocoercivity for a linearized multi-species Boltzmann system

A new coercivity estimate on the spectral gap of the linearized Boltzmann collision operator for multiple species is proved. The assumptions on the collision kernels include hard and Maxwellian potentials under Grad's angular cut-off condition. Two proofs are given: a non-constructive one, based on the decomposition of the collision operator into a compact and a coercive part, and a constructive one, which exploits the "cross-effects" coming from collisions between different species and which yields explicit constants. Furthermore, the essential spectra of the linearized collision operator and the linearized Boltzmann operator are calculated. Based on the spectral-gap estimate, the exponential convergence towards global equilibrium with explicit rate is shown for solutions to the linearized multi-species Boltzmann system on the torus. The convergence is achieved by the interplay between the dissipative collision operator and the conservative transport operator and is proved by using the hypocoercivity method of Mouhot and Neumann.

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arXiv2015

On the Mean Field and Classical Limits of Quantum Mechanics

The main result in this paper is a new inequality bearing on solutions of the $N$-body linear Schrödinger equation and of the mean field Hartree equation. This inequality implies that the mean field limit of the quantum mechanics of $N$ identical particles is uniform in the classical limit and provides a quantitative estimate of the quality of the approximation. This result applies to the case of $C^{1,1}$ interaction potentials. The quantity measuring the approximation of the $N$-body quantum dynamics by its mean field limit is analogous to the Monge-Kantorovich (or Wasserstein) distance with exponent $2$. The inequality satisfied by this quantity is reminiscent of the work of Dobrushin on the mean field limit in classical mechanics [Func. Anal. Appl. 13 (1979), 115-123]. Our approach of this problem is based on a direct analysis of the $N$-particle Liouville equation, and avoids using techniques based on the BBGKY hierarchy or on second quantization.

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arXiv2015

Hölder continuity of solutions to hypoelliptic equations with bounded measurable coefficients

We prove that $L^2$ weak solutions to hypoelliptic equations with bounded measurable coefficients are Hölder continuous. The proof relies on classical techniques developed by De Giorgi and Moser together with the averaging lemma and regularity transfers developed in kinetic theory. The latter tool is used repeatedly: first in the proof of the local gain of integrability of sub-solutions; second in proving that the gradient with respect to the velocity variable is $L^{2+ε}_{\mathrm{loc}}$; third, in the proof of an "hypoelliptic isoperimetric De Giorgi lemma." To get such a lemma, we develop a new method which combines the classical isoperimetric inequality on the diffusive variable with the structure of the integral curves of the first-order part of the operator. It also uses that the gradient of solutions w.r.t. $v$ is $L^{2+ε}_{\mathrm{loc}}$.

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arXiv2015

On measure solutions of the Boltzmann equation, Part II: Rate of convergence to equilibrium

The paper considers the convergence to equilibrium for measure solutions of the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation for hard potentials with angular cutoff. We prove the exponential sharp rate of strong convergence to equilibrium for conservative measure solutions having finite mass and energy. The proof is based on the regularizing property of the iterated collision operators, exponential moment production estimates, and some previous results on the exponential rate of strong convergence to equilibrium for square integrable initial data. We also obtain a lower bound of the convergence rate and deduce that no eternal solutions exist apart from the trivial stationary solutions given by the Maxwellian equilibrium. We finally use these convergence rates in order to deduce global-in-time strong stability of measure solutions.

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arXiv2014

From Boltzmann to incompressible Navier-Stokes in Sobolev spaces with polynomial weight

We study the Boltzmann equation on the $d$-dimensional torus in a perturbative setting around a global equilibrium under the Navier-Stokes linearisation. We use a recent functional analysis breakthrough to prove that the linear part of the equation generates a $C^0$-semigroup with exponential decay in Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces with polynomial weight, independently on the Knudsen number. Finally we show a Cauchy theory and an exponential decay for the perturbed Boltzmann equation, uniformly in the Knudsen number, in Sobolev spaces with polynomial weight. The polynomial weight is almost optimal and furthermore, this result only requires derivatives in the space variable and allows to connect to solutions to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in these spaces.

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arXiv2014

A new approach to quantitative propagation of chaos for drift, diffusion and jump processes

This paper is devoted the the study of the mean field limit for many-particle systems undergoing jump, drift or diffusion processes, as well as combinations of them. The main results are quantitative estimates on the decay of fluctuations around the deterministic limit and of correlations between particles, as the number of particles goes to infinity. To this end we introduce a general functional framework which reduces this question to the one of proving a purely functional estimate on some abstract generator operators (consistency estimate) together with fine stability estimates on the flow of the limiting nonlinear equation (stability estimates). Then we apply this method to a Boltzmann collision jump process (for Maxwell molecules), to a McKean-Vlasov drift-diffusion process and to an inelastic Boltzmann collision jump process with (stochastic) thermal bath. To our knowledge, our approach yields the first such quantitative results for a combination of jump and diffusion processes.

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arXiv2013

Factorization for non-symmetric operators and exponential H-theorem

We present an abstract method for deriving decay estimates on the resolvents and semigroups of non-symmetric operators in Banach spaces in terms of estimates in another smaller reference Banach space. This applies to a class of operators writing as a regularizing part, plus a dissipative part. The core of the method is a high-order quantitative factorization argument on the resolvents and semigroups. We then apply this approach to the Fokker-Planck equation, to the kinetic Fokker- Planck equation in the torus, and to the linearized Boltzmann equation in the torus. We finally use this information on the linearized Boltzmann semi- group to study perturbative solutions for the nonlinear Boltzmann equation. We introduce a non-symmetric energy method to prove nonlinear stability in this context in $L^1_v L^\infty _x (1 + |v|^k)$, $k > 2$, with sharp rate of decay in time. As a consequence of these results we obtain the first constructive proof of exponential decay, with sharp rate, towards global equilibrium for the full nonlinear Boltzmann equation for hard spheres, conditionally to some smoothness and (polynomial) moment estimates. This improves the result in [32] where polynomial rates at any order were obtained, and solves the conjecture raised in [91, 29, 86] about the optimal decay rate of the relative entropy in the H-theorem.

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arXiv2013

Empirical Measures and Vlasov Hierarchies

The present note reviews some aspects of the mean field limit for Vlasov type equations with Lipschitz continuous interaction kernel. We discuss in particular the connection between the approach involving the N-particle empirical measure and the formulation based on the BBGKY hierarchy. This leads to a more direct proof of the quantitative estimates on the propagation of chaos obtained on a more general class of interacting systems in [S.Mischler, C. Mouhot, B. Wennberg, arXiv:1101.4727]. Our main result is a stability estimate on the BBGKY hierarchy uniform in the number of particles, which implies a stability estimate in the sense of the Monge-Kantorovich distance with exponent 1 on the infinite mean field hierarchy. This last result amplifies Spohn's uniqueness theorem [H. Spohn, Math. Meth. Appl. Sci. 3 (1981), 445-455].

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arXiv2013

Stabilité orbitale pour le système de Vlasov-Poisson gravitationnel

This paper reviews the recent mathematical progresses made on the study of the orbital stability properties for the gravitational Vlasov-Poisson system. We present in details the paper of Lemou, Méhats and Raphaël (Inventiones 2011) and we review also the previous works by Dolbeault, Guo, Hadzic, Lin, Rein, Sánchez, Soler, Wan, Wolansky. We also include a discussion of the history of this topic and the pioneering works by physicists like Antonov, Lynden-Bell and Aly. This is the text of a Bourbaki seminar given in november 2011

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