Time averaging for the strongly confined nonlinear Schrödinger equation, using almost-periodicity (Q931647)

The authors study the asymptotic behaviour of a nonlinear gas of quantum particles, evolving in the three-dimensional space \((x,z)\in \mathbb R^3\) (\(x\in\mathbb R^2\), \(z\in\mathbb R\)), yet strongly confined along the vertical \(z\) direction. The dynamics of the gas essentially occurs along the remaining, horizontal \(x\) plane, and the goal of the authors is to recover the limiting dynamics along \(x\), by performing the relevant averaging procedure. Mathematically speaking, the paper is devoted to the study of a nonlinear. Schrödinger equation in the presence of a small parameter. The key point in the present study, that makes it possible to perform a clean averaging procedure, relies on the fact that the operator \(\exp(-it(H-z/\varepsilon))\) is almost periodic in time (here by \(H_z\) is denoted the confining Hamiltonian in \(z\)-direction). This observation allows to average \(\exp(-it(H_z/\varepsilon))\) in time without having to deal with the difficulty of small denominator. The authors exploit the existence of long-time averages for almost-periodic functions to perform the necessary averaging procedure in nonlinear problem under consideration.