A kinetic eikonal equation (Q412579)

The present article is a short note concerning the large scale hyperbolic limit of a kinetic equation with BGK relaxation operator or, more concretely, the limit of its Hopf-Cole transformation. The authors consider the kinetic equation \[ \partial_t f + \nu \cdot \nabla_x f = M(\nu) \rho - f, \quad (t,x,\nu) \in \mathbb{R}_{+}\times \mathbb{R}_{+}^n \times V, \] where \(f(t,x,\nu)\) denotes the density of particles moving with speed \(\nu \in V\) at time \(t\) and position \(x\), \(\rho\) denotes the macroscopic density of particles, \(V\) is a bounded symmetric subset of \(\mathbb{R}_{+}^n\) and the Maxwellian \(M\) is symmetric. After the scaling \((t,x)\to (t/\varepsilon,x/\varepsilon)\) the authors focus on the limit \(\varepsilon \to 0\). Denoting by \(f^\varepsilon\) the scaled density and introducing \[ f^{\varepsilon}(t,x,\nu) = M(\nu) e^{-\frac{\varphi^{\varepsilon}(t,x,\nu)}{\varepsilon}}, \] with \(\varphi^{\varepsilon}(0,x,\nu) = \varphi_0(x) \geq 0\), the main result of the paper on the limit of \(\varphi^{\varepsilon}\) is presented. If \(M\in L^1(V)\) is nonnegative and symmetric, \(\varphi^{\varepsilon}\) converges uniformly towards \(\varphi^0\), where \(\varphi^0\) does not depend on \(\nu\) and is the viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation \[ \int_V \frac{M(\nu)}{1-\partial_t \varphi^0(t,x) -\nu \cdot \partial_x \varphi^0(t,x)} \,d\nu = 1,\quad (t,x) \in \mathbb{R}_+ \times \mathbb{R}^n. \]