From a Kac-like particle system to the Landau equation for hard potentials and Maxwell molecules

We prove a quantitative result of convergence of a conservative stochastic particle system to the solution of the homogeneous Landau equation for hard potentials. There are two main difficulties: (i) the known stability results for this class of Landau equations concern regular solutions and seem difficult to extend to study the rate of convergence of some empirical measures; (ii) the conservativeness of the particle system is an obstacle for (approximate) independence. To overcome (i), we prove a new stability result for the Landau equation for hard potentials concerning very general measure solutions. Due to (ii), we have to couple, our particle system with some non independent nonlinear processes, of which the law solves, in some sense, the Landau equation. We then prove that these nonlinear processes are not so far from being independent. Using finally some ideas of Rousset [25], we show that in the case of Maxwell molecules, the convergence of the particle system is uniform in time

A criterion for Talagrand's quadratic transportation cost inequality

We show that the quadratic transportation cost inequality $T_2$ is equivalent to both a Poincar\'e inequality and a strong form of the Gaussian concentration property. The main ingredient in the proof is a new family of inequalities, called modified quadratic transportation cost inequalities in the spirit of the modified logarithmic-Sobolev inequalities by Bobkov and Ledoux \cite{BL97}, that are shown to hold as soon as a Poincar\'e inequality is satisfied

Trends to Equilibrium in Total Variation Distance

This paper presents different approaches, based on functional inequalities, to study the speed of convergence in total variation distance of ergodic diffusion processes with initial law satisfying a given integrability condition. To this end, we give a general upper bound "\`{a} la Pinsker" enabling us to study our problem firstly via usual functional inequalities (Poincar\'{e} inequality, weak Poincar\'{e},...) and truncation procedure, and secondly through the introduction of new functional inequalities \Ipsi. These \Ipsi-inequalities are characterized through measure-capacity conditions and $F$-Sobolev inequalities. A direct study of the decay of Hellinger distance is also proposed. Finally we show how a dynamic approach based on reversing the role of the semi-group and the invariant measure can lead to interesting bounds.Comment: 36 page

Measure concentration through non-Lipschitz observables and functional inequalities

Non-Gaussian concentration estimates are obtained for invariant probability measures of reversible Markov processes. We show that the functional inequalities approach combined with a suitable Lyapunov condition allows us to circumvent the classical Lipschitz assumption of the observables. Our method is general and covers diffusions as well as pure-jump Markov processes on unbounded spaces

Functional Inequalities via Lyapunov conditions

We review here some recent results by the authors, and various coauthors, on (weak,super) Poincar\'e inequalities, transportation-information inequalities or logarithmic Sobolev inequality via a quite simple and efficient technique: Lyapunov conditions

Deviation bounds for additive functionals of Markov process

In this paper we derive non asymptotic deviation bounds for $$\P_\nu (|\frac 1t \int_0^t V(X_s) ds - \int V d\mu | \geq R)$$ where $X$ is a $\mu$ stationary and ergodic Markov process and $V$ is some $\mu$ integrable function. These bounds are obtained under various moments assumptions for $V$, and various regularity assumptions for $\mu$. Regularity means here that $\mu$ may satisfy various functional inequalities (F-Sobolev, generalized Poincar\'e etc...)

Degenerate Fokker-Planck Equations : Bismut Formula, Gradient Estimate and Harnack Inequality

By constructing successful couplings for degenerate diffusion processes, explicit derivative formula and Harnack type inequalities are presented for solutions to a class of degenerate Fokker-Planck equations on $\R^m\times\R^{d}$. The main results are also applied to the study of gradient estimate, entropy/transportation-cost inequality and heat kernel inequalities.Comment: 23 page