A Mean Field Limit for the Hamiltonian Vlasov System

Abstract

The derivation of effective equations for interacting many body systems has seen a lot of progress in the recent years. While dealing with classical systems, singular potentials are quite challenging, comparably strong results are known to hold for quantum systems. In this paper, we wish to show how techniques developed for the derivation of effective descriptions of quantum systems can be used for classical ones. While our future goal is to use these ideas to treat singularities in the interaction, the focus here is to present how quantum mechanical techniques can be used for a classical system and we restrict ourselves to regular two-body interaction potentials. In particular we compute a mean field limit for the Hamilton Vlasov system in the sense of Fr\"ohlich, Knowles, Schwarz, and, more recently, Neiss, that arises from classical dynamics. The structure reveals strong analogy to the bosonic quantum mechanical ensemble of the many-particle Schr\"odinger equation and the Hartree equation as its mean field limit.