A Probabilistic Mean Field Limit for the Vlasov-Poisson System for Ions

Abstract: The Vlasov-Poisson system for ions is a kinetic equation for dilute, unmagnetised plasma. It describes the evolution of the ions in a plasma under the assumption that the electrons are thermalized. Consequently, the Poisson coupling for the electrostatic potential contains an additional exponential nonlinearity not present in the electron Vlasov-Poisson system. The system can be formally derived through a mean field limit from a microscopic system of ions interacting with a thermalized electron distribution. However, it is an open problem to justify this limit rigorously for ions modelled as point charges. Existing results on the derivation of the three-dimensional ionic Vlasov-Poisson system require a truncation of the singularity in the Coulomb interaction at spatial scales of order $N^{- \beta}$ with $\beta < 1/15$, which is more restrictive than the available results for the electron Vlasov-Poisson system. In this article, we prove that the Vlasov-Poisson system for ions can be derived from a microscopic system of ions and thermalized electrons with interaction truncated at scale $N^{- \beta}$ with $\beta < 1/3$. We develop a generalisation of the probabilistic approach to mean field limits that is applicable to interaction forces defined through a nonlinear coupling with the particle density. The proof is based on a quantitative uniform law of large numbers for convolutions between empirical measures of independent, identically distributed random variables and locally Lipschitz functions.