Trend to the equilibrium for the Fokker-Planck system with an external magnetic field

Abstract: We consider the Fokker-Planck equation with a strong external magnetic field. Global-in-time solutions are built near the Maxwellian, the global equilibrium state for the system. Moreover, we prove the convergence to equilibrium at exponential rate. The results are first obtained on spaces with an exponential weight. Then they are extended to larger functional spaces, like the Lebesgue space and the Sobolev space with polynomial weight, by the method of factorization and enlargement of the functional space developed in [Gualdani, Mischler, Mouhot, 2017].

Review text

The purpose of this paper is to study the convergence to the equilibrium state for a version of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation. The initial value problem under consideration is \[\partial_t F + v\cdot \nabla_x F -(v \times B_e)\cdot \nabla_v F = \nabla_v \cdot (\nabla_v+v)F, \qquad F(0,x,v) = F_0(x,v).\tag{1} \] Here $v \in R^3$ and $x \in T^3 = [0,2\pi]^3$. The function $B_e(x)$ represents a fixed external magnetic field which is periodic in $R^3$. The Maxwellian \[\mu(v) = \frac{1}{(2\pi)^{3/2}}e^{-v^2/2}\] is a time independent, spatially homogeneous, solution of (1), i.e., the steady state solution. The goal of the paper is to determine the rate at which the solution, $F$, to (1) converges to $\mu(v)$. The analysis depends on $F$ being initially close to $\mu$. Therefore $f(t,x,v)$ is defined to be the standard perturbation of $\mu$ and $F(t,x,v) = \mu+\mu f$. In terms of the function $f(t,x,v)$ the equation (1) is rewritten as \[\partial_t f + v\cdot \nabla_x f -(v \times B_e)\cdot \nabla_v f = -(-\nabla_v + v)\cdot \nabla_v f, \qquad f(0,x,v) = f_0(x,v). \tag{2}\] Analysis in the paper is then applied to (2) and convergence $F \rightarrow \mu$ is obtained by showing $f \rightarrow 0$. The author is interested in proving the convergence of $F$ to $\mu$ with exponential decay in the largest possible function spaces. To do this weighted Lebesgue spaces are defined as follows: $L^p(m),\; 1 \le p \le 2,$ is the space associated with the norm $$ ||F||_{L^p(m)} = ||Fm||_{L^p} = \Big (\int_{R^3 \times T^3} F^p(x,v) m^p(v)\;dvdx \Big )^{1/p}, $$ in which $m(v)$ is a weight function. A first step in the analysis of (2) is to guarantee that the problem is well posed. A theorem is proved verifying that if $B_e \in C^{\infty}(T^3)$ and $f_0 \in C_0^{\infty}(T^3 \times R^3)$ then the IVP (2) admits a unique solution $f \in C^1([0,\infty),\; L^2(\mu^{1/2}))$. The author then proceeds to prove two theorems that show the convergence of the solution to (2) with exponential rate on spaces with an exponential weight function $\mu^{1/2}$. Specifically the function spaces are $L^2(\mu^{1/2})$ with norm $$ ||h||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})} = \int_{R^3 \times T^3} |h(x,v)|^2 \mu(v)\; dx dv, $$ and $H^1(\mu^{1/2})$ with norm $$ ||h||_{H^1(\mu^{1/2})} = ||h||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})} + ||\nabla_x h||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})} + ||\nabla_v h||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})}. $$ The first theorem states that if $f_0 \in L^2(\mu^{1/2})$ such that $\langle \langle f_0 \rangle \rangle = \int f_0 \; dvdx = 0$ and $B_e \in C^{\infty}(T^3)$ then there are constants $C,k > 0$ such that the solution $f$ to (2) satisfies $$ ||f(t)||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})} \le Ce^{-kt} ||f_0||_{L^2(\mu^{1/2})}. $$ The second theorem proves that if $f_0 \in H^1(\mu^{1/2})$, $\langle \langle f_0 \rangle \rangle = 0$, and $B_e \in C^{\infty}(T^3)$ then the solution to (2) converges to zero with rate $$ ||f(t)||_{H^1(\mu^{1/2})} \le Ce^{-kt} ||f_0||_{H^1(\mu^{1/2})}.$$ A further objective of the paper is to extend the class of function spaces for which the convergence to the steady state is proved. In this direction the space $L^p(m)$ is considered with $m = \langle v \rangle^k = (1+|v|^2)^{k/2}$ and $p \in [1,2],\; k > 3(1-1/p)$. A theorem is then given that guarantees the convergence with exponential rate of the solution to (1) to the equilibrium solution in the space $L^p(m)$. Also, the weighted Sobolev space $\tilde W^{1,p}$ is defined as $\tilde W^{1,p} = h \in L^p(m)$ such that $\langle v \rangle h, \nabla_v h, \nabla_x h \in L^p(m)$, and a theorem is proved giving the convergence with exponential rate to the equilibrium state in the space $\tilde W^{1,p}$.

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