Isothermal hydrodynamic limit for kinetic flocking models with nonlinear velocity alignment

Abstract

We study the hydrodynamic limit of kinetic flocking models with nonlinear velocity alignment and strong local Fokker--Planck forcing. In the limit of small Knudsen number the kinetic densities converge to a local Maxwellian centered around macroscopic quantities satisfying the compressible Euler system with isothermal pressure $p = \s ρ$, while macroscopic alignment is obtained by convolution of the microscopic velocity law with the standard Gaussian, resulting in a different nonlinearity. Such discrepancy has been observed already in \cite{black2025hydrodynamic}. In this note we rigorously justify the limit for admissible weak kinetic solutions and non-vacuous limiting macroscopic solution. Our analysis provides a quantitative rate of convergence in terms of relative entropy: $\cH(f_\e | μ) \lesssim \e$ provided initially $\cH(f_\e(0) | μ(0)) \leq \e$. In the linear case we recover the known result \cite{karper2015hydrodynamic}.

arXiv comment22 pages