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On the derivation of the wave kinetic equation for NLS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2021

Yu Deng
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA; E-mail: yudeng@usc.edu
Zaher Hani
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; E-mail: zhani@umich.edu

Abstract

A fundamental question in wave turbulence theory is to understand how the wave kinetic equation describes the long-time dynamics of its associated nonlinear dispersive equation. Formal derivations in the physics literature, dating back to the work of Peierls in 1928, suggest that such a kinetic description should hold (for well-prepared random data) at a large kinetic time scale $T_{\mathrm {kin}} \gg 1$ and in a limiting regime where the size L of the domain goes to infinity and the strength $\alpha $ of the nonlinearity goes to $0$ (weak nonlinearity). For the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation, $T_{\mathrm {kin}}=O\left (\alpha ^{-2}\right )$ and $\alpha $ is related to the conserved mass $\lambda $ of the solution via $\alpha =\lambda ^2 L^{-d}$.

In this paper, we study the rigorous justification of this monumental statement and show that the answer seems to depend on the particular scaling law in which the $(\alpha , L)$ limit is taken, in a spirit similar to how the Boltzmann–Grad scaling law is imposed in the derivation of Boltzmann’s equation. In particular, there appear to be two favourable scaling laws: when $\alpha $ approaches $0$ like $L^{-\varepsilon +}$ or like $L^{-1-\frac {\varepsilon }{2}+}$ (for arbitrary small $\varepsilon $), we exhibit the wave kinetic equation up to time scales $O(T_{\mathrm {kin}}L^{-\varepsilon })$, by showing that the relevant Feynman-diagram expansions converge absolutely (as a sum over paired trees). For the other scaling laws, we justify the onset of the kinetic description at time scales $T_*\ll T_{\mathrm {kin}}$ and identify specific interactions that become very large for times beyond $T_*$. In particular, the relevant tree expansion diverges absolutely there. In light of those interactions, extending the kinetic description beyond $T_*$ toward $T_{\mathrm {kin}}$ for such scaling laws seems to require new methods and ideas.

Information

Type
Analysis
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1 Admissible range for $(\alpha , L, T)$ in the $\left (\log _L \left (\alpha ^{-1}\right ),\log _L T\right )$ plot when $d\geq 3$. The coloured region is the range of Theorem 1.3 (up to $\varepsilon $ endpoint accuracy). The red line denotes the case when $T=T_{\mathrm {kin}}=\alpha ^{-2}$, which our coloured region touches at two points corresponding to $T\sim 1$ and $T\sim L^{2}$.

Figure 1

Figure 2 On the left, a node $\mathfrak n$ with its three children $\mathfrak n_1, \mathfrak n_2, \mathfrak n_3$, with signs $\iota _1=\iota _3=\iota =-\iota _2$. On the right, a tree of scale $4$$(\mathfrak s(\mathcal{T}\,\,)=4)$ with root $\mathfrak r$, four branching nodes ($\mathfrak r, \mathfrak n_1, \mathfrak n_2, \mathfrak n_3$) and $l=9$ leaves, along with their signatures.

Figure 2

Figure 3 A paired tree with two pairings $(p=2)$. The set ${\mathcal S}$ of single leaves is $\{\mathfrak l_1,\mathfrak l_4,\mathfrak l_6,\mathfrak l_7,\mathfrak l_9 \}$. The subset $\mathcal R\subset \mathcal {S}\cup \{\mathfrak {r}\}$ of red-coloured vertices is $\{\mathfrak r, \mathfrak l_1,\mathfrak l_4,\mathfrak l_6\}$. Here $(l, p, r)=(9, 2, 4)$. A strongly admissible assignment with respect to this pairing, colouring and a certain fixed choice of the red modes $\left (k_{\mathfrak r},k_{\mathfrak l_4},k_{\mathfrak l_6}\right )$ corresponds to having the modes $k_{\mathfrak l_2}=k_{\mathfrak l_3}$, $k_{\mathfrak l_5}=k_{\mathfrak l_8}$ and $\lvert k_{\mathfrak l}\rvert \leq L^{\theta }$ for all the uncoloured leaves. The rest of the modes are determined according to Definition 2.2.

Figure 3

Figure 4 Construction of the tree $\mathcal{T}\,^D$ by successive plantings of trees $\mathcal{T}\,_1$ and $\mathcal{T}\,_2$ onto the first two nodes of a ternary tree, starting with a root $\mathfrak r$ and stopping after $2D$ steps, leaving a leaf node $\mathfrak r'$. In the figure, $D=2$.

Figure 4

Figure 5 A tree of scale $\mathfrak s (\mathcal{T}\,\,)=6$ and $p=6-1=5$ pairings. The pairings force $\lvert y-z\rvert =\lvert n_5-\ell _5\rvert =\lvert n_4-\ell _4\rvert =\cdots =\lvert k-x\rvert $.