A blob method for the aggregation equation

DOI10.1090/MCOM3033MaRDI QIDQ2796015zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 23 March 2016

Published in Mathematics of Computation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.6424

aggregation equation particle method vortex blob method

PDEs in connection with fluid mechanics (35Q35) PDEs in connection with statistical mechanics (35Q82) Error bounds for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M15) Particle methods and lattice-gas methods (76M28) Interacting particle systems in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C22)

Abstract: Motivated by classical vortex blob methods for the Euler equations, we develop a numerical blob method for the aggregation equation. This provides a counterpoint to existing literature on particle methods. By regularizing the velocity field with a mollifier or "blob function", the blob method has a faster rate of convergence and allows a wider range of admissible kernels. In fact, we prove arbitrarily high polynomial rates of convergence to classical solutions, depending on the choice of mollifier. The blob method conserves mass and the corresponding particle system is both energy decreasing for a regularized free energy functional and preserves the Wasserstein gradient flow structure. We consider numerical examples that validate our predicted rate of convergence and illustrate qualitative properties of the method.

Review text

The authors start from the aggregation equation \(\rho_t+\nabla \cdot (v\rho )=0\), with \(v=-\nabla K\ast \rho \), for some kernel \(K\), with the initial condition \(\rho (x,0)=\rho_0(x)\). Considering the trajectory of a particle NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\frac{d}{dt}X^{t}(\alpha )=-\nabla K\ast \rho (X^t(\alpha ),t),\quad X^0 (\alpha )=\alpha ,NEWLINE\]NEWLINE they rewrite the aggregation equation as NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\begin{cases} \frac{d}{dt}\rho (X^{t}(\alpha ),t)=(\Delta K\ast \rho (X^t(\alpha ),t))\rho (X^t (\alpha ),t), \\ \rho (X^{0}(\alpha ),0)=\rho _{0}(\alpha ).\end{cases}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE They introduce the approximate velocity field along the exact particle trajectories as NEWLINE\[NEWLINEv^{h}(x,t)=-\int_{\mathbb{R}^{d}}\nabla K_{\delta }(x-X^{t}(\alpha ))\rho _{0}^{\text{particle}}(\alpha )d\alpha =-\sum_{j}\nabla K_{\delta }(x-X_{j}(t))\rho _{0_{j}}h^{d}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where \(K_{\delta }\) is the convolution product between the kernel \(K\) and \(\psi _{\delta }\) defined through \(\psi _{\delta }(x)=\delta ^{-d}\psi (x/\delta )\) \(\psi \) being a smooth mollifier or blob function. This allows defining approximate particle trajectories and the authors build the associated blob method. The main result of the paper proves the convergence of the approximate solution built through this blob method, under assumptions on the kernel and on the mollifier. In the last part of their paper, the authors present the results of numerical simulations choosing either regular or discontinuous initial data.

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