Dynamical large deviations for plasmas below the Debye length and the Landau equation (Q2034631)

This is the second of three papers, in which the authors compute the large deviation Hamiltonian and the large deviation parameter for the classical kinetic theories respectively of the dilute gases (the Boltzmann equation), mean field interactions, plasmas and self-gravitating stars (the Balescu-Guernsey-Lenard equation), and plasmas at a scale much smaller than the Debye length and in a weak coupling limit (the Landau equation). In particular, this paper deals with the last theory, the main result being the derivation of the Landau Hamiltonian describing the dynamical large deviations for the probability of any homogeneous evolution path for the empirical density. Two derivations of this Hamiltonian are given. The first one starts from the large deviation Hamiltonian of a dilute gas in the Boltzmann-Grad limit and considers the weak scattering limit. The second one directly starts from the plasma dynamics. The authors also find the large deviation Hamiltonian for the empirical density of N particles which are driven by N independent Markov processes, and are coupled in a mean field way, explaining that the plasma large deviation Hamiltonian is not that of N particles coupled in a mean-field way.