A Mean Field Limit for the Vlasov–Poisson System

Abstract

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. We present a probabilistic proof of the mean field limit and propagation of chaos N-particle systems in three dimensions with positive (Coulomb) or negative (Newton) 1/r potentials scaling like 1/N and an N-dependent cut-off which scales like N - 1 / 3 + ϵ . In particular, for typical initial data, we show convergence of the empirical distributions to solutions of the Vlasov–Poisson system with either repulsive electrical or attractive gravitational interactions.