Large Deviations Principle for Stochastic Scalar Conservation Laws

We investigate large deviations for a family of conservative stochastic PDEs (conservation laws) in the asymptotic of jointly vanishing noise and viscosity. We obtain a first large deviations principle in a space of Young measures. The associated rate functional vanishes on a wide set, the so-called set of measure-valued solutions to the limiting conservation law. We therefore investigate a second order large deviations principle, thus providing a quantitative characterization of non-entropic solutions to the conservation law.Comment: 40 page

A Renewal version of the Sanov theorem

Large deviations for the local time of a process $X_t$ are investigated, where $X_t=x_i$ for $t \in [S_{i-1},S_i[$ and $(x_j)$ are i.i.d.\ random variables on a Polish space, $S_j$ is the $j$-th arrival time of a renewal process depending on $(x_j)$. No moment conditions are assumed on the arrival times of the renewal process.Comment: 13 page

Full metastable asymptotic of the Fisher information

We establish an expansion by Gamma-convergence of the Fisher information relative to the reference measure exp(-beta V), where V is a generic multiwell potential and beta goes to infinity. The expansion reveals a hierarchy of multiple scales reflecting the metastable behavior of the underlying overdamped Langevin dynamics: distinct scales emerge and become relevant depending on whether one considers probability measures concentrated on local minima of V, probability measures concentrated on critical points of V, or generic probability measures on R^d. We thus fully describe the asymptotic behavior of minima of the Fisher information over regular sets of probabilities. The analysis mostly relies on spectral properties of diffusion operators and the related semiclassical Witten Laplacian and covers also the case of a compact smooth manifold as underlying space.Comment: 24 pages. Typos correcte

Large deviations for a random speed particle

We investigate large deviations for the empirical measure of the position and momentum of a particle traveling in a box with hot walls. The particle travels with uniform speed from left to right, until it hits the right boundary. Then it is absorbed and re-emitted from the left boundary with a new random speed, taken from an i.i.d. sequence. It turns out that this simple model, often used to simulate a heat bath, displays unusually complex large deviations features, that we explain in detail. In particular, if the tail of the update distribution of the speed is sufficiently oscillating, then the empirical measure does not satisfy a large deviations principle, and we exhibit optimal lower and upper large deviations functionals

Quasi-potentials of the entropy functionals for scalar conservation laws

We investigate the quasi-potential problem for the entropy cost functionals of non-entropic solutions to scalar conservation laws with smooth fluxes. We prove that the quasi-potentials coincide with the integral of a suitable Einstein entropy.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

Large deviations of the current in stochastic collisional dynamics

We consider a class of deterministic local collisional dynamics, showing how to approximate them by means of stochastic models and then studying the fluctuations of the current of energy. We show first that the variance of the time-integrated current is finite and related to the conductivity by the Green-Kubo relation. Next we show that the law of the empirical average current satisfies a large deviations principle and compute explicitly the rate functional in a suitable scaling limit. We observe that this functional is not strictly convex.Comment: keywords and references adde

Some Remarks on Negation and Quantification in Leibniz’s Logic

We argue, with special reference to various passages from Leibniz’s Generales Inquisitiones, that the simultaneous presence of two switches concerning the negation operator is the main source of the difficulties raised by many people against his logical investigations. The former switch carries negation from outside to inside of the proposition to which it is applied; the latter is the socalled obversion law (which asserts the equivalence of “non est” and “est non”). Applied in sequence, the two switches transform an outside (propositional or de dicto) negation into a conceptual (predicative or de re) negation. We also investigate the further difficulties which arise from the interplay between these switches and Leibniz’s use of indefinite letters

Convergence of the one-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation

We consider the Cahn-Hilliard equation in one space dimension with scaling a small parameter \epsilon and a non-convex potential W. In the limit \espilon \to 0, under the assumption that the initial data are energetically well-prepared, we show the convergence to a Stefan problem. The proof is based on variational methods and exploits the gradient flow structure of the Cahn-Hilliard equation.Comment: 23 page