Harnack inequality for kinetic Fokker-Planck equations with rough coefficients and application to the Landau equation

Abstract

We extend the De Giorgi–Nash–Moser theory to a class of kinetic Fokker-Planck equations and deduce new results on the Landau-Coulomb equation. More precisely, we first study the Holder regularity and establish a Harnack inequality for solutions to a general linear equation of Fokker-Planck type whose coefficients are merely measurable and essentially bounded, i.e. assuming no regularity on the coefficients in order to later derive results for non-linear problems. This general equation has the formal structure of the hypoelliptic equations of type II , sometimes also called ultraparabolic equations of Kolmogorov type, but with rough coefficients: it combines a first-order skew-symmetric operator with a second-order elliptic operator involving derivatives along only part of the coordinates and with rough coefficients. These general results are then applied to the non-negative essentially bounded weak solutions of the Landau equation with inverse-power law γ ∈ [−d, 1] whose mass, energy and entropy density are bounded and mass is bounded away from 0, and we deduce the Holder regularity of these solutions.