Mean Field Limit for Coulomb-Type Flows

Abstract

We establish the mean-field convergence for systems of points evolving along the gradient flow of their interaction energy when the interaction is the Coulomb potential or a super-coulombic Riesz potential, for the first time in arbitrary dimension. The proof is based on a modulated energy method using a Coulomb or Riesz distance, assumes that the solutions of the limiting equation are regular enough and exploits a weak-strong stability property for them. The method can handle the addition of a regular interaction kernel, and applies also to conservative and mixed flows. In the appendix, it is also adapted to prove the mean-field convergence of the solutions to Newton's law with Coulomb or Riesz interaction in the monokinetic case to solutions of an Euler-Poisson type system.