Optimal coupling for mean field limits

We review recent quantitative results on the approximation of mean field diffusion equations by large systems of interacting particles, obtained by optimal coupling methods. These results concern a larger range of models, more precise senses of convergence and links with the long time behaviour of the systems to be considered

Quantitative concentration inequalities on sample path space for mean field interaction

We consider a system of particles experiencing diffusion and mean field interaction, and study its behaviour when the number of particles goes to infinity. We derive non-asymptotic large deviation bounds measuring the concentration of the empirical measure of the paths of the particles around its limit. The method is based on a coupling argument, strong integrability estimates on the paths in Holder norm, and some general concentration result for the empirical measure of identically distributed independent paths

Phi-entropy inequalities for diffusion semigroups

We obtain and study new $\Phi$-entropy inequalities for diffusion semigroups, with Poincar\'e or logarithmic Sobolev inequalities as particular cases. From this study we derive the asymptotic behaviour of a large class of linear Fokker-Plank type equations under simple conditions, widely extending previous results. Nonlinear diffusion equations are also studied by means of these inequalities. The $\Gamma_2$ criterion of D. Bakry and M. Emery appears as a main tool in the analysis, in local or integral forms.Comment: 31 page

Phi-entropy inequalities and Fokker-Planck equations

We present new $\Phi$-entropy inequalities for diffusion semigroups under the curvature-dimension criterion. They include the isoperimetric function of the Gaussian measure. Applications to the long time behaviour of solutions to Fokker-Planck equations are given

Non ultracontractive heat kernel bounds by Lyapunov conditions

Nash and Sobolev inequalities are known to be equivalent to ultracontractive properties of heat-like Markov semigroups, hence to uniform on-diagonal bounds on their kernel densities. In non ultracontractive settings, such bounds can not hold, and (necessarily weaker, non uniform) bounds on the semigroups can be derived by means of weighted Nash (or super-Poincar\'e) inequalities. The purpose of this note is to show how to check these weighted Nash inequalities in concrete examples, in a very simple and general manner. We also deduce off-diagonal bounds for the Markov kernels of the semigroups, refining E. B. Davies' original argument

Dynamics of a planar Coulomb gas

We study the long-time behavior of the dynamics of interacting planar Brow-nian particles, confined by an external field and subject to a singular pair repulsion. The invariant law is an exchangeable Boltzmann -- Gibbs measure. For a special inverse temperature, it matches the Coulomb gas known as the complex Ginibre ensemble. The difficulty comes from the interaction which is not convex, in contrast with the case of one-dimensional log-gases associated with the Dyson Brownian Motion. Despite the fact that the invariant law is neither product nor log-concave, we show that the system is well-posed for any inverse temperature and that Poincar{\'e} inequalities are available. Moreover the second moment dynamics turns out to be a nice Cox -- Ingersoll -- Ross process in which the dependency over the number of particles leads to identify two natural regimes related to the behavior of the noise and the speed of the dynamics.Comment: Minor revision for Annals of Applied Probabilit

Dimensional contraction via Markov transportation distance

It is now well known that curvature conditions \`a la Bakry-Emery are equivalent to contraction properties of the heat semigroup with respect to the classical quadratic Wasserstein distance. However, this curvature condition may include a dimensional correction which up to now had not induced any strenghtening of this contraction. We first consider the simplest example of the Euclidean heat semigroup, and prove that indeed it is so. To consider the case of a general Markov semigroup, we introduce a new distance between probability measures, based on the semigroup, and adapted to it. We prove that this Markov transportation distance satisfies the same properties for a general Markov semigroup as the Wasserstein distance does in the specific case of the Euclidean heat semigroup, namely dimensional contraction properties and Evolutional variational inequalities

Mean-field limit for the stochastic Vicsek model

We consider the continuous version of the Vicsek model with noise, proposed as a model for collective behavior of individuals with a fixed speed. We rigorously derive the kinetic mean-field partial differential equation satisfied when the number N of particles tends to infinity, quantifying the convergence of the law of one particle to the solution of the PDE. For this we adapt a classical coupling argument to the present case in which both the particle system and the PDE are defined on a surface rather than on the whole space. As part of the study we give existence and uniqueness results for both the particle system and the PDE

Weighted Nash Inequalities

Nash or Sobolev inequalities are known to be equivalent to ultracontractive properties of Markov semigroups, hence to uniform bounds on their kernel densities. In this work we present a simple and extremely general method, based on weighted Nash inequalities, to obtain non-uniform bounds on the kernel densities. Such bounds imply a control on the trace or the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the heat kernels. We illustrate the method on the heat kernel on \dR naturally associated with the measure with density $C_a\exp(-|x|^a)$, with $