Spectral and formal stability criteria of spatially inhomogeneous stationary solutions to the Vlasov equation for the Hamiltonian mean-field model

Linear and nonlinear response of the Vlasov system with nonintegrable Hamiltonian

Linear and nonlinear response formulas taking into account all Casimir invariants are derived without use of angle-action variables of a single-particle (mean-field) Hamiltonian. This article deals mainly with the Vlasov system in a spatially inhomogeneous quasistationary state whose associating single-particle Hamiltonian is not integrable and has only one integral of the motion, the Hamiltonian itself. The basic strategy is to restrict the form of perturbation so that it keeps Casimir invariants within a linear order, and the single particle's probabilistic density function is smooth with respect to the single particle's Hamiltonian. The theory is applied for a spatially two-dimensional system and is confirmed by numerical simulations. A nonlinear response formula is also derived in a similar manner.

Collisional relaxation in the inhomogeneous Hamiltonian mean-field model: Diffusion coefficients

Systems of particles with long-range interactions present two important processes: first, the formation of out-of-equilibrium quasistationary states (QSS) and, second, the collisional relaxation towards Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium in a much longer time scale. In this paper, we study the collisional relaxation in the Hamiltonian mean-field model using the appropriate kinetic equations for a system of N particles at order 1/N: the Landau equation when collective effects are neglected and the Lenard-Balescu equation when they are taken into account. We derive explicit expressions for the diffusion coefficients using both equations for any magnetization, and we obtain analytic expressions for highly clustered configurations. An important conclusion is that in this system collective effects are crucial in order to describe the relaxation dynamics. We compare the diffusion calculated with the kinetic equations with simulations set up to simulate the system with or without collective effects, obtaining a very good agreement between theory and simulations.

Trapping scaling for bifurcations in the Vlasov systems

We study nonoscillating bifurcations of nonhomogeneous steady states of the Vlasov equation, a situation occurring in galactic models, or for Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal modes in plasma physics. Through an unstable manifold expansion, we show that in one spatial dimension the dynamics is very sensitive to the initial perturbation: the instability may saturate at small amplitude-generalizing the "trapping scaling" of plasma physics-or may grow to produce a large-scale modification of the system. Furthermore, resonances are strongly suppressed, leading to different phenomena with respect to the homogeneous case. These analytical findings are illustrated and extended by direct numerical simulations with a cosine interaction potential.

Landau-like theory for universality of critical exponents in quasistationary states of isolated mean-field systems

An external force dynamically drives an isolated mean-field Hamiltonian system to a long-lasting quasistationary state, whose lifetime increases with population of the system. For second order phase transitions in quasistationary states, two nonclassical critical exponents have been reported individually by using a linear and a nonlinear response theories in a toy model. We provide a simple way to compute the critical exponents all at once, which is an analog of the Landau theory. The present theory extends the universality class of the nonclassical exponents to spatially periodic one-dimensional systems and shows that the exponents satisfy a classical scaling relation inevitably by using a key scaling of momentum.

Non-mean-field critical exponent in a mean-field model: dynamics versus statistical mechanics

Mean-field theory tells us that the classical critical exponent of susceptibility is twice that of magnetization. However, linear response theory based on the Vlasov equation, which is naturally introduced by the mean-field nature, makes the former exponent half of the latter for families of quasistationary states having second order phase transitions in the Hamiltonian mean-field model and its variances, in the low-energy phase. We clarify that this strange exponent is due to the existence of Casimir invariants which trap the system in a quasistationary state for a time scale diverging with the system size. The theoretical prediction is numerically confirmed by N-body simulations for the equilibrium states and a family of quasistationary states.