Global existence for the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system with nearly neutral initial data (Q1120747)

The equations of motion for a collisionless plasma are the Vlasov-Maxwell equations: \[ \partial f_{\alpha}/\partial t+\hat v_{\alpha}\cdot \text{grad}_ x f_{\alpha}+e_{\alpha}(E+\hat v_{\alpha}\times B\quad)\cdot \text{grad}_ v f_{\alpha}=0; \] \[ \partial E/\partial t=c curl B-j,\quad div E=\rho;\quad \partial B/\partial t=-c curl E,\quad div B=0. \] Here the charge density \(\rho\) and the current density j are defined by \(\rho (t,x)=4\pi \int_{R^ 3}\sum_{\alpha}e_{\alpha}f_{\alpha}(t,x,v)dv;\) \(j(t,x)=4\pi \int_{R^ 3}\sum_{\alpha}e_{\alpha}\hat v_{\alpha}f_{\alpha}(t,x,v)dv;\) where \(\hat v_{\alpha}=v/\sqrt{m^ 2_{\alpha}+| v|^ 2/c^ 2}.\) Here c denote the speed of light; \(e_{\alpha}\) the charge and \(m_{\alpha}\) the mass of particle type \(\alpha\). Initial values \(f_{\alpha}(0,x,v)=f^ 0_{\alpha}(x,v)\), \(E(0,x)=E^ 0(x)\), \(B(0,x)=B^ 0(x)\) are prescribed. These are to be of class \(C^ 1\), of compact support, and consistent: at time \(t=0\), we require that div \(B^ 0=0\), div \(E^ 0=\rho_ 0.\) A sufficient condition for global existence of a smooth solution is that the v-support of f(t,x,v) be bounded on every bounded time interval [\textit{R. Glassey} and \textit{W. Strauss}, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 92, 59-90 (1986; Zbl 0595.35072)]. In the present paper, it is shown that this condition holds in the nearly neutral case: the force field is to be suitably small, but the initial densities of each of several species can be large, provided only that the total positive charge nearly cancels the total negative charge in an appropriate sense at \(t=0\).