Singularities in $L^1$-supercritical Fokker–Planck equations: A qualitative analysis

Abstract

A class of nonlinear Fokker–Planck equations with superlinear drift is investigated in the $L^1$-supercritical regime, which exhibits a finite critical mass. The equations have a formal Wasserstein-like gradient-flow structure with a convex mobility and a free energy functional whose minimising measure has a singular component if above the critical mass. Singularities and concentrations also arise in the evolutionary problem and their finite-time appearance constitutes a primary technical difficulty. This paper aims at a global-in-time qualitative analysis with main focus on the isotropic case, where solutions will be shown to converge to the unique minimiser of the free energy as time tends to infinity. A key step in the analysis consists in properly controlling the singularity profiles during the evolution. Our study covers the three-dimensional Kaniadakis–Quarati model for Bose–Einstein particles, and thus provides a first rigorous result on the continuation beyond blow-up and long-time asymptotic behaviour for this model.