Nonlinear diffusion limit of non-local interactions on a sphere

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Peletier, Mark A., Shalova, Anna
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Peletier, Mark A.
Shalova, Anna
author_facet Peletier, Mark A.
Shalova, Anna
contents We study an aggregation PDE with competing attractive and repulsive forces on a sphere of arbitrary dimension. In particular, we consider the limit of strongly localized repulsion with a constant attraction term. We prove convergence of solutions of such a system to solutions of the aggregation-diffusion equation with a porous-medium-type diffusion term. The proof combines variational techniques with elements of harmonic analysis on a sphere. In particular, we characterize the square root of the convolution operator in terms of the spherical harmonics, which allows us to overcome difficulties arising due to the convolution on a sphere being non-commutative. The study is motivated by the toy model of transformers introduced by Geshkovski et al. (2025); and we discuss the applicability of the results to this model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_03185
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonlinear diffusion limit of non-local interactions on a sphere
Peletier, Mark A.
Shalova, Anna
Analysis of PDEs
Mathematical Physics
We study an aggregation PDE with competing attractive and repulsive forces on a sphere of arbitrary dimension. In particular, we consider the limit of strongly localized repulsion with a constant attraction term. We prove convergence of solutions of such a system to solutions of the aggregation-diffusion equation with a porous-medium-type diffusion term. The proof combines variational techniques with elements of harmonic analysis on a sphere. In particular, we characterize the square root of the convolution operator in terms of the spherical harmonics, which allows us to overcome difficulties arising due to the convolution on a sphere being non-commutative. The study is motivated by the toy model of transformers introduced by Geshkovski et al. (2025); and we discuss the applicability of the results to this model.
title Nonlinear diffusion limit of non-local interactions on a sphere
topic Analysis of PDEs
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.03185