Nonlocal Aggregation-Difusion Equations: entropies, gradient flows, phase transitions and applications.

Abstract: his talk will be devoted to an overview of recent results understanding the bifurcation analysis of nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations arising in a myriad of applications such as consensus formation, optimization, granular media, swarming behavior, opinion dynamics and nancial mathematics to name a few. We will present several results related to localized Cucker-Smale orientation dynamics, McKean-Vlasov equations, and nonlinear difusion Keller-Segel type models in several settings. We will show the existence of continuous or discontinuous phase transitions on the torus under suitable assumptions on the Fourier modes of the interaction potential. The analysis is based on linear stability in the right functional space associated to the regularity of the problem at hand. While in the case of linear di usion, one can work in the L2 framework, nonlinear difusion needs the stronger Linfty topology to proceed with the analysis based on Crandall-Rabinowitz bifurcation analysis applied to the variation of the entropy functional. Explicit examples show that the global bifurcation branches can be very complicated. Stability of the solutions will be discussed based on numerical simulations with fully explicit energy decaying finite volume schemes specifically tailored to the gradient ow structure of these problems. The theoretical analysis of the asymptotic stability of the diferent branches of solutions is a challenging open problem.

Posted on Nov 28, 2022 in Differential Equations, Seminars