Error estimates in the non-relativistic limit for the two-dimensional cubic Klein-Gordon equation

Abstract: In this paper, we study the non-relativistic limit of the two-dimensional cubic nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation with a small parameter $0<\varepsilon \ll 1$ which is inversely proportional to the speed of light. We show the cubic nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation converges to the cubic nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation with a convergence rate of order $O(\varepsilon^2)$. In particular, for the defocusing case with high regularity initial data, we show error estimates of the form $C(1+t)^N \varepsilon^2$ at time $t$ up to a long time of order $\varepsilon^{-\frac{2}{N+1}}$, while for initial data with limited regularity, we also show error estimates of the form $C(1+t)^M\varepsilon$ at time $t$ up to a long time of order $\varepsilon^{-\frac{1}{M+1}}$. Here $N$ and $M$ are constants depending on initial data. The idea of proof is to reformulate nonrelativistic limit problems to stability problems in geometric optics, then employ the techniques in geometric optics to construct approximate solutions up to an arbitrary order, and finally, together with the decay estimates of the cubic Schr\"{o}dinger equation, derive the error estimates.