On the Fluctuations about the Vlasov Limit for N-particle Systems with Mean-Field Interactions

Abstract

Whereas the Vlasov (a.k.a. “mean-field”) limit for N-particle systems with sufficiently smooth potentials has been the subject of many studies, the literature on the dynamics of the fluctuations around the limit is sparse and somewhat incomplete. The present work fulfills two goals: 1) to provide a complete, simple proof of a general theorem describing the evolution of a given initial fluctuation field for the particle density in phase space, and 2) to characterize the most general class of initial symmetric probability measures that lead (in the infinite-particle limit) to the same Gaussian random field that arises when the initial phase space coordinates of the particles are assumed to be i.i.d. random variables (so that the standard central limit theorem applies). The strategy of the proof of the fluctuation evolution result is to show first that the deviations from mean-field converge for each individual system, in a purely deterministic context. Then, one obtains the corresponding probabilistic result by a modification of the continuous mapping theorem. The characterization of the initial probability measures is in terms of a higher-order chaoticity condition (a.k.a. “Boltzmann property”).