The Vlasov–Poisson–Landau system in the weakly collisional regime

Abstract:

Consider the Vlasov–Poisson–Landau system with Coulomb potential in the weakly collisional regime on a $3$-torus, i.e. \begin{align*} \partial _t F(t,x,v) + v_i \partial _{x_i} F(t,x,v) + E_i(t,x) \partial _{v_i} F(t,x,v) = \nu Q(F,F)(t,x,v),\\ E(t,x) = \nabla \Delta ^{-1} (\int _{\mathbb R^3} F(t,x,v)\, \mathrm {d} v - {{\int }\llap {-}}_{\mathbb T^3} \int _{\mathbb R^3} F(t,x,v)\, \mathrm {d} v \, \mathrm {d} x), \end{align*} with $\nu \ll 1$. We prove that for $\epsilon >0$ sufficiently small (but independent of $\nu$), initial data which are $O(\epsilon \nu ^{1/3})$-Sobolev space perturbations from the global Maxwellians lead to global-in-time solutions which converge to the global Maxwellians as $t\to \infty$. The solutions exhibit uniform-in-$\nu$ Landau damping and enhanced dissipation.

Our main result is analogous to an earlier result of Bedrossian for the Vlasov–Poisson–Fokker–Planck equation with the same threshold. However, unlike in the Fokker–Planck case, the linear operator cannot be inverted explicitly due to the complexity of the Landau collision operator. For this reason, we develop an energy-based framework, which combines Guo’s weighted energy method with the hypocoercive energy method and the commuting vector field method. The proof also relies on pointwise resolvent estimates for the linearized density equation.