Semiclassical regularization of Vlasov equations and wavepackets for nonlinear Schrödinger equations

Abstract: We consider the semiclassical limit of nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations with wavepacket initial data. We recover the Wigner measure of the problem, a macroscopic phase-space density which controls the propagation of the physical observables such as mass, energy and momentum. Wigner measures have been used to create effective models for wave propagation in random media, quantum molecular dynamics, mean field limits, and the propagation of electrons in graphene. In nonlinear settings, the Vlasov-type equations obtained for the Wigner measure are often ill-posed on the physically interesting spaces of initial data. In this paper we are able to select the measure-valued solution of the 1+1 dimensional Vlasov-Poisson equation which correctly captures the semiclassical limit, thus finally resolving the non-uniqueness in the seminal result of [Zhang, Zheng & Mauser, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. (2002) 55, doi:10.1002/cpa.3017]. The same approach is also applied to the Vlasov-Dirac-Benney equation with small wavepacket initial data, extending several known results.