2012 Young Researchers Workshop:
Kinetic Description of Multiscale Phenomena

Classical Solutions for the Relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell-Fokker-Planck system

Stephen Pankavich

United States Naval Academy

The relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system is a fundamental collisionless, kinetic model of plasma dynamics. When one wishes to study weakly collisional effects in such a system, often a diffusive term is included within the Vlasov equation to form the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell-Fokker-Planck (RVMFP) system. Recently, the precise form of the diffusion operator which preserves the Lorentz invariance and preferred stationary solutions of (RVMFP) was introduced by Calogero and Felix. In the current talk, we will provide the first well-posedness results concerning classical solutions of this system posed in one spatial and two momentum dimensions.