McKean-Vlasov equations involving hitting times: blow-ups and global solvability


Abstract in English

This paper is concerned with the analysis of blow-ups for two McKean-Vlasov equations involving hitting times. Let $(B(t); , t ge 0)$ be standard Brownian motion, and $tau:= inf{t ge 0: X(t) le 0}$ be the hitting time to zero of a given process $X$. The first equation is $X(t) = X(0) + B(t) - alpha mathbb{P}(tau le t)$. We provide a simple condition on $alpha$ and the distribution of $X(0)$ such that the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation has no blow-up, and thus the McKean-Vlasov dynamics is well-defined for all time $t ge 0$. Our approach relies on a connection between the McKean-Vlasov equation and the supercooled Stefan problem, as well as several comparison principles. The second equation is $X(t) = X(0) + beta t + B(t) + alpha log mathbb{P}(tau > t)$, whose Fokker-Planck equation is non-local. We prove that for $beta > 0$ sufficiently large and $alpha$ no greater than a sufficiently small positive constant, there is no blow-up and the McKean-Vlasov dynamics is well-defined for all time $t ge 0$. The argument is based on a new transform, which removes the non-local term, followed by a relative entropy analysis.

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