Well-Posedness and Equilibrium Behaviour of Overdamped Dynamic Density Functional Theory

TL;DR

This paper proves the well-posedness, stability, and convergence to equilibrium of overdamped dynamic density functional theory, a nonlinear PDE model for colloidal fluids and related systems, incorporating hydrodynamic interactions.

Contribution

It establishes the existence, uniqueness, and stability of solutions for DDFT with hydrodynamic interactions, and shows convergence to equilibrium.

Findings

Global well-posedness of DDFT established.

Density is Lyapunov stable with respect to free energy.

Exponential convergence to equilibrium proven.

Abstract

We establish the global well-posedness of overdamped dynamic density functional theory (DDFT): a nonlinear, nonlocal integro-partial differential equation used in statistical mechanical models of colloidal fluids, and other applications including nonlinear reaction-diffusion systems and opinion dynamics. With nonlinear no-flux boundary conditions, we determine the existence and uniqueness of the weak density and flux, subject to two-body hydrodynamic interactions (HI). We also show that the density is Lyapunov stable with respect to the usual (Helmholtz) free energy functional. Principally, this is done by rewriting the dynamics for the density in an implicit gradient flow form, resembling the classical Smoluchowski equation but with spatially inhomogeneous diffusion and advection tensors. We also rigorously show that the stationary density is independent of the HI tensors, and prove exponentially fast convergence to equilibrium.