A dimension-reduced description of general Brownian motion by non-autonomous diffusion-like equations

Holger Stephan

Žurnal matematičeskoj fiziki, analiza, geometrii, Tome 12 (2005), pp. 187-202.

Résumé

The Brownian motion of a classical particle can be described by a Fokker–Planck-like equation. Its solution is a probability density in phase space. By integrating this density w.r.t. the velocity, we get the spatial distribution or concentration. We reduce the $2n$-dimensional problem to an $n$-dimensional diffusion-like equation in a rigorous way, i.e., without further assumptions in the case of general Brownian motion, when the particle is forced by linear friction and homogeneous random (non-Gaussian) noise. Using a representation with pseudodifferential operators, we derive a reduced diffusion-like equation, which turns out to be non-autonomous and can become elliptic for long times and hyperbolic for short times, although the original problem was time homogeneous. Moreover, we consider some examples: the classical Brownian motion (Gaussian noise), the Cauchy noise case (which leads to an autonomous diffusion-like equation), and the free particle case.