Grenier’s nonlinear iterative scheme

In his paper [Grenier, CPAM 2000], Grenier introduced a nonlinear iterative scheme to prove the instability of Euler and Prandtl equations. Recently, the scheme is also proved to be decisive in the study of water waves: [Ming-Rousset-Tzvetkov, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 2015], and plasma physics: [Han-Kwan & Hauray, CMP 2015] or my recent paper with Han-Kwan (see also my previous blog discussions). I am certain that it can be useful in other contexts as well. In this blog post, I’d like to give a sketch of the scheme to prove instability.

Continue reading

Nonlinear instability of Vlasov-Maxwell systems in the classical and quasineutral limits

Daniel Han-Kwan and I have just submitted a paper entitled: “Nonlinear instability of Vlasov-Maxwell systems in the classical and quasineutral limits”, which is also available on arxiv: arXiv:1506.08537. In this paper, we study the instability of solutions to the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell systems in two limiting regimes: the classical limit when the speed of light tends to infinity and the quasineutral limit when the Debye length tends to zero. First, in the classical limit {\varepsilon \rightarrow 0}, with {\varepsilon} being the inverse of the speed of light, we construct a family of solutions that converge initially polynomially fast to a homogeneous solution {\mu} of Vlasov-Poisson in arbitrarily high Sobolev norms, but become of order one away from {\mu} in arbitrary negative Sobolev norms within time of order {|\log \varepsilon|}. Second, we deduce the invalidity of the quasineutral limit in {L^2} in arbitrarily short time.

Continue reading