Framework for studying stochastic partial differential equations
Martin Hairer's theory of regularity structures provides a framework for studying a large class of subcritical parabolic stochastic partial differential equations arising from quantum field theory.[1] The framework covers the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation, the equation and the parabolic Anderson model, all of which require renormalization in order to have a well-defined notion of solution.
Hairer won the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in mathematics for introducing regularity structures.[2]
Definition
A regularity structure is a triple consisting of:
- a subset (index set) of that is bounded from below and has no accumulation points;
- the model space: a graded vector space , where each is a Banach space; and
- the structure group: a group of continuous linear operators such that, for each and each , we have .
A further key notion in the theory of regularity structures is that of a model for a regularity structure, which is a concrete way of associating to any and a "Taylor polynomial" based at and represented by , subject to some consistency requirements.
More precisely, a model for on , with consists of two maps
- ,
- .
Thus, assigns to each point a linear map , which is a linear map from into the space of distributions on ; assigns to any two points and a bounded operator , which has the role of converting an expansion based at into one based at . These maps and are required to satisfy the algebraic conditions
- ,
- ,
and the analytic conditions that, given any , any compact set , and any , there exists a constant such that the bounds
- ,
- ,
hold uniformly for all -times continuously differentiable test functions with unit norm, supported in the unit ball about the origin in , for all points , all , and all with . Here denotes the shifted and scaled version of given by
- .
References