Uniform-in-time estimates on corrections to mean field for interacting Brownian particles

Abstract: We consider a system of classical Brownian particles interacting via a smooth long-range potential in the mean-field regime, and we analyze the propagation of chaos in form of sharp, uniform-in-time estimates on many-particle correlation functions. Our results cover both the kinetic Langevin setting and the corresponding overdamped Brownian dynamics. The approach is mainly based on so-called Lions expansions, which we combine with new diagrammatic tools to capture many-particle cancellations, as well as with fine ergodic estimates on the linearized mean-field equation, and with discrete stochastic calculus with respect to initial data. In the process, we derive some new ergodic estimates for the linearized Vlasov-Fokker-Planck kinetic equation that are of independent interest. Our analysis also leads to a uniform-in-time quantitative central limit theorem and to uniform-in-time concentration estimates for the empirical measure associated with the particle dynamics.