Small BGK waves and nonlinear Landau damping (Q639374)

This papers discusses the (non) existence of specific solutions to the one dimensional Vlasov-Poisson system \[ \frac{\partial f}{\partial t} + \frac{\partial f}{\partial x} - E \frac{\partial f}{\partial v} = 0, \qquad \frac{\partial E}{\partial x} = -\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} f \, dv +1, \] where \(f(t,x,v) \geq 0\) is the density of electrons at \(x \in \mathbb{R}\) having a velocity \(v \in \mathbb{R}\). More precisely, the authors study the existence of steady state (traveling wave) solutions \((f(x-ct),E(x-ct))\) of this equation, known as BGK modes. When such solutions exist, nonlinear Landau damping (exponential return to a local equilibrium) does not hold. The results are stated for perturbations of homogeneous equilibria \(f_0(v)\). Theorem~1.1 shows that there exist a \(W^{s,p}\) perturbation of \(f_0 \in W^{s,p}\) (for \(p>1\) and \(0 \leq s < 1+\frac1p\)) which is a traveling wave; while Theorem~1.2 states that there is no such perturbation when \(s>1+\frac1p\). The latter result can be strengthened in the particular case \(p=2\) (Theorem~1.3). Theorem~1.1 is proved in Section~2 using bifurcation theory near an appropriate modification of \(f_0\). Sections~3 and~5 are devoted respectively to the proofs of Theorem~1.2 and Theorem~3, with technical results on linear damping provided in Section~4.