In this paper, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of solutions of the continuous kinetic version of flocking by Cucker and Smale [IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 52 (2007), pp. 852–862], which describes the collective behavior of an ensemble of organisms, animals, or devices. This kinetic version introduced in [S.-Y. Ha and E. Tadmor, Kinet. Relat. Models, 1 (2008), pp. 415–435] is here obtained starting from a Boltzmann-type equation. The large-time behavior of the distribution in phase space is subsequently studied by means of particle approximations and a stability property in distances between measures. A continuous analogue of the theorems of [F. Cucker and S. Smale, IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 52 (2007), pp. 852–862] is shown to hold for the solutions on the kinetic model. More precisely, the solutions will concentrate exponentially fast in velocity to the mean velocity of the initial condition, while in space they will converge towards a translational flocking solution.

It is well known that the analysis of the large-time asymptotics of Fokker-Planck type equations by the entropy method is closely related to proving the validity of convex Sobolev inequalities. Here we highlight this connection from an applied PDE point of view. In our unified presentation of the theory we present new results to the following topics: an elementary derivation of Bakry-Emery type conditions, results concerning perturbations of invariant measures with general admissible entropies, ...

We consider the flow of gas in an N-dimensional porous medium with initial density v0(x) ≥ 0. The density v(x, t) then satisfies the nonlinear degenerate parabolic equation vt = ∆vm where m > 1 is a physical constant. Assuming that R (1 + |x|2)v0(x) dx < ∞, we prove that v(x, t) behaves asymptotically, as t → ∞, like the Barenblatt-Pattle solution V (|x|, t). We prove that the L1-distance decays at a rate t1/((N+2)m−N). Moreover, if N = 1, we obtain an explicit time decay for the L∞-distance at a suboptimal rate. The method we use is based on recent results we obtained for the Fokker-Planck equation

Many transport equations, such as the neutron transport, radiative transfer, and transport equations for waves in random media, have a diffusive scaling that leads to the diffusion equations. In many physical applications, the scaling parameter (mean free path) may differ in several orders of magnitude from the rarefied regimes to the hydrodynamic (diffusive) regimes within one problem, and it is desirable to develop a class of robust numerical schemes that can work uniformly with respect to this relaxation parameter. In an earlier work [Jin, Pareschi, and Toscani, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 35 (1998), pp. 2405--2439] we handled this numerical problem for discrete-velocity kinetic models by reformulating the system into a form commonly used for a relaxation scheme for conservation laws [Jin and Xin, Comm. Pure Appl. Math., 48 (1995), pp. 235--277]. Such a reformulation allows us to use the splitting technique for relaxation schemes to design a class of implicit, yet explicitly implementable, schemes that work with high resolution uniformly with respect to the relaxation parameter. In this paper we show that such a numerical technique can be applied to a large class of transport equations with continuous velocities, when one uses the even and odd parities of the transport equation.