Improved energy methods for nonlocal diffusion problems

We prove an energy inequality for nonlocal diffusion operators of the following type, and some of its generalisations: L u ( x ) := ∫ R N K ( x , y ) ( u ( y ) − u ( x ) ) d y , where L acts on a real function u defined on R N , and we assume that K ( x , y ) is uniformly strictly positive in a neighbourhood of x = y . The inequality is a nonlocal analogue of the Nash inequality, and plays a similar role in the study of the asymptotic decay of solutions to the nonlocal diffusion equation ∂ t u = L u as the Nash inequality does for the heat equation. The inequality allows us to give a precise decay rate of the L p norms of u and its derivatives. As compared to existing decay results in the literature, our proof is perhaps simpler and gives new results in some cases.J. A. Cañizo was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER), project MTM2014-52056-P. A. Molino was partially supported by MINECO - FEDER GrantMTM2015-68210-P(Spain), Junta de Andalucía FQM-116 (Spain) andMINECO Grant BES-2013-066595 (Spain)

Three eras of micellization

Micellization is the precipitation of lipids from aqueous solution into aggregates with a broad distribution of aggregation number. Three eras of micellization are characterized in a simple kinetic model of Becker-Döring type. The model asigns the same constant energy to the (k-1) monomer-monomer bonds in a linear chain of k particles. The number of monomers decreases sharply and many clusters of small size are produced during the first era. During the second era, nuclei are increasing steadily in size until their distribution becomes a self-similar solution of the diffusion equation. Lastly, when the average size of the nuclei becomes comparable to its equilibrium value, a simple mean-field Fokker-Planck equation describes the final era until the equilibrium distribution is reached

Regularity and mass conservation for discrete coagulation-fragmentation equations with diffusion

We present a new a-priori estimate for discrete coagulation fragmentation systems with size-dependent diffusion within a bounded, regular domain confined by homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. Following from a duality argument, this a-priori estimate provides a global L2 bound on the mass density and was previously used, for instance, in the context of reaction-diffusion equations. In this paper we demonstrate two lines of applications for such an estimate: On the one hand, it enables to simplify parts of the known existence theory and allows to show existence of solutions for generalised models involving collision-induced, quadratic fragmentation terms for which the previous existence theory seems difficult to apply. On the other hand and most prominently, it proves mass conservation (and thus the absence of gelation) for almost all the coagulation coefficients for which mass conservation is known to hold true in the space homogeneous case

On a thermodynamically consistent modification of the Becker-Doering equations

Recently, Dreyer and Duderstadt have proposed a modification of the Becker--Doering cluster equations which now have a nonconvex Lyapunov function. We start with existence and uniqueness results for the modified equations. Next we derive an explicit criterion for the existence of equilibrium states and solve the minimization problem for the Lyapunov function. Finally, we discuss the long time behavior in the case that equilibrium solutions do exist

Convergence to equilibrium for the discrete coagulation-fragmentation equations with detailed balance

Under the condition of detailed balance and some additional restrictions on the size of the coefficients, we identify the equilibrium distribution to which solutions of the discrete coagulation-fragmentation system of equations converge for large times, thus showing that there is a critical mass which marks a change in the behavior of the solutions. This was previously known only for particular cases as the generalized Becker-D\"oring equations. Our proof is based on an inequality between the entropy and the entropy production which also gives some information on the rate of convergence to equilibrium for solutions under the critical mass.Comment: 28 page

A well-posedness theory in measures for some kinetic models of collective motion

We present existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence results for some kinetic equations motivated by models for the collective behavior of large groups of individuals. Models of this kind have been recently proposed to study the behavior of large groups of animals, such as flocks of birds, swarms, or schools of fish. Our aim is to give a well-posedness theory for general models which possibly include a variety of effects: an interaction through a potential, such as a short-range repulsion and long-range attraction; a velocity-averaging effect where individuals try to adapt their own velocity to that of other individuals in their surroundings; and self-propulsion effects, which take into account effects on one individual that are independent of the others. We develop our theory in a space of measures, using mass transportation distances. As consequences of our theory we show also the convergence of particle systems to their corresponding kinetic equations, and the local-in-time convergence to the hydrodynamic limit for one of the models

Algunos problemas relacionados con el estudio de núcleos de interacción: coagulación, fragmentación y difusión en ecuaciones cinéticas y cuánticas

Tesis escrita en inglés, con el primer capítulo escrito tanto en inglés como en españolTesis Univ. Granada. Departamento de Matemática Aplicada. Leída el 2 de junio de 200

Harris-type results on geometric and subgeometric convergence to equilibrium for stochastic semigroups

We provide simple and constructive proofs of Harris-type the-orems on the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium and the speed of equilibration of discrete-time and continuous-time stochastic semigroups. Our results apply both to cases where the relaxation speed is exponential (also called geomet-ric) and to those with no spectral gap, with non-exponential speeds (also called subgeometric). We give constructive esti-mates in the subgeometric case and discrete-time statements which seem both to be new. The method of proof also differs from previous works, based on semigroup and interpolation arguments, valid for both geometric and subgeometric cases with essentially the same ideas. In particular, we present very simple new proofs of the geometric case.Grant PID2020-117846GB-I00Research net-work RED2018-102650-TMaría de Maeztu grant CEX2020-001105-M from the Spanish governmen

Three eras of micellization

Micellization is the precipitation of lipids from aqueous solution into aggregates with a broad distribution of aggregation number. Three eras of micellization are characterized in a simple kinetic model of Becker-Döring type. The model asigns the same constant energy to the (k-1) monomer-monomer bonds in a linear chain of k particles. The number of monomers decreases sharply and many clusters of small size are produced during the first era. During the second era, nuclei are increasing steadily in size until their distribution becomes a self-similar solution of the diffusion equation. Lastly, when the average size of the nuclei becomes comparable to its equilibrium value, a simple mean-field Fokker-Planck equation describes the final era until the equilibrium distribution is reached