KdV limit for the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system

TL;DR

This paper derives and rigorously justifies the Korteweg-de Vries equations as a limit of the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system, revealing the connection between kinetic plasma models and fluid equations under specific scalings.

Contribution

It provides the first rigorous derivation of KdV equations from the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system using micro-macro decomposition and weighted energy methods.

Findings

Uniform convergence of solutions as the scaling parameter tends to zero.

Explicit convergence rate in the scaling parameter.

Construction of smooth solutions over finite time intervals.

Abstract

Two fundamental models in plasma physics are given by the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system and the compressible Euler-Poisson system which both capture the complex dynamics of plasmas under the self-consistent electric field interactions at the kinetic and fluid levels, respectively. Although there have been extensive studies on the long wave limit of the Euler-Poisson system towards Korteweg-de Vries equations, few results on this topic are known for the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system due to the complexity of the system and its underlying multiscale feature. In this article, we derive and justify the Korteweg-de Vries equations from the Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system modelling the motion of ions under the Maxwell-Boltzmann relation. Specifically, under the Gardner-Morikawa transformation $$ (t,x,v)\to (\delta^{\frac{3}{2}}t,\delta^{\frac{1}{2}}(x-\sqrt{\frac{8}{3}}t),v) $$ with $ \varepsilon^{\frac{2}{3}}\leq \delta\leq \varepsilon^{\frac{2}{5}}$ and $\varepsilon>0$ being the Knudsen number, we construct smooth solutions of the rescaled Vlasov-Poisson-Landau system over an arbitrary finite time interval that can converge uniformly to smooth solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries equations as $\delta\to 0$. Moreover, the explicit rate of convergence in $\delta$ is also obtained. The proof is obtained by an appropriately chosen scaling and the intricate weighted energy method through the micro-macro decomposition around local Maxwellians.