An \(L^2\) to \(L^\infty\) framework for the Landau equation (Q827061)

The authors consider the Landau equation with Coulomb potential: \(\partial _{t}F+v\cdot \nabla _{x}F=Q(F,F)=\nabla v\cdot \int_{\mathbb{R}^{3}}\phi (v-v^{\prime })[F(v^{\prime })\nabla _{v}F(v)-F(v)\nabla _{v}F(v^{\prime })]dv\), posed in \((0,\infty )\times \mathbb{T}^{3}\), where \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\) is the 3D torus, \(F(t,x,v)\geq 0\) is the spatially periodic distribution function for particles, and \(\phi \) is the non-negative matrix defined as \( \phi ^{ij}(v)=\{\delta _{i,j}-\frac{v_{i}v_{j}}{\left\vert v\right\vert ^{2}} \}\left\vert v\right\vert ^{-1}\). They introduce the normalized Maxwellian \( \mu (v)=e^{-\left\vert v\right\vert ^{2}}\)\ and writing \(F(t,x,v)=\mu (v)+f(t,x,v)\) they observe that \(f\) satisfies \(f_{t}+v\cdot \partial _{x}f+Lf=\Gamma (f,f)\), where \(L=-A-K\) is the linear operator with \(Af=\mu ^{-1/2}\partial _{i}\{\mu ^{1/2}\sigma ^{ij}[\partial _{j}f+v_{j}f]\}\), \( Kf=-\mu ^{-1/2}\partial _{i}\{\mu \phi ^{ij}\ast \mu ^{1/2}[\partial _{j}f+v_{j}f]\}\), and \(\Gamma (g,f)=\partial _{i}[\{\phi ^{ij}\ast \lbrack \mu ^{1/2}g]\}\partial _{j}f]+\{\phi ^{ij}\ast \lbrack v_{i}\mu ^{1/2}g]\}\partial _{j}f-\partial _{i}[\{\phi ^{ij}\ast \lbrack \mu ^{1/2}\partial _{j}g]\}f]+\{\phi ^{ij}\ast \lbrack v_{i}\mu ^{1/2}\partial _{j}g]\}f\). The initial condition \(f(0,x,v)=f_{0}(x,v)\) is added, where \( f_{0}\) satisfies the conservation laws \(\int_{\mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R} ^{3}}f_{0}(x,v)\sqrt{\mu }=\int_{\mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R} ^{3}}v_{i}f_{0}(x,v)\sqrt{\mu }=\int \int_{\mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R} ^{3}}\left\vert v\right\vert ^{2}f_{0}(x,v)\sqrt{\mu }=0\). The authors define the notion of weak solution to this problem as a function \( f(t,x,v)\in L^{\infty }((0,\infty )\times \mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R} ^{3},w^{\vartheta }(v)dtdxdv)\), which satisfies \(\int_{0}^{T}\left\Vert f(s)\right\Vert _{\sigma ,\vartheta }^{2}ds<+\infty \) and a variational formulation issued from the above equation. Here \(\left\Vert f(s)\right\Vert _{\sigma ,\vartheta }^{2}=\int \int_{\mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R} ^{3}}w^{2\vartheta }[\sigma ^{ij}\partial _{i}f\partial _{j}f+\sigma ^{ij}v_{i}v_{j}f^{2}]dvdx\). The main result of the paper proves the existence of a unique weak solution to this problem, if the initial data \( f_{0}\) satisfies \(\left\Vert f_{0}\right\Vert _{\infty ,\vartheta }^{2}\leq \varepsilon _{0}\) and \(\left\Vert -v\cdot \nabla _{v}f_{0}+\overline{A} _{f_{0}}f_{0}\right\Vert _{\infty ,\vartheta }+\left\Vert D_{v}f_{0}\right\Vert _{\infty ,\vartheta }<\infty \) for some \(\varepsilon _{0}\in (0,1]\) and some positive \(\vartheta \). This weak solution satisfies different estimates. For the proof, the authors first consider the linearized Landau equation \(\partial _{t}f+v\cdot \partial _{x}f+Lf=\Gamma (g,f)\), for some bounded function \(g\). They establish a uniform \(L^{2}\) -estimate on a\ classical solution to the original problem and to this linearized problem if \(\left\Vert g\right\Vert _{\infty }\) is small enough, from which they then deduce a uniform \(L^{\infty }\)-estimate and a \(C^{0,\alpha }\)-estimate, through \(L^{2}-L^{\infty }\) estimates for the solution of auxiliary linear problems. This allows deriving an Hölder estimate and a \(S^{p}\)-estimate for the solution to the linearized problem, where \(\left\Vert f\right\Vert _{S^{p}(\Omega )}=\left\Vert f\right\Vert _{L^{p}(\Omega )}+\left\Vert D_{v}f\right\Vert _{L^{p}(\Omega )}+\left\Vert D_{vv}f\right\Vert _{L^{p}(\Omega )}+\left\Vert (-\partial _{t}-v\cdot \nabla _{x})f\right\Vert _{L^{p}(\Omega )}\), with \(\Omega =(0,\infty )\times \mathbb{T}^{3}\times \mathbb{R}^{3}\).