Published Paper

Inserted: 21 mar 2024
Last Updated: 20 jun 2025

Journal: J. Lond. Math. Soc. (2)
Year: 2025

Abstract:

We prove well-posedness of a class of kinetic-type Mean Field Games, which typically arise when agents control their acceleration. Such systems include independent variables representing the spatial position as well as velocity. We consider non-separable Hamiltonians without any structural conditions, which depend locally on the density variable. Our analysis is based on two main ingredients: an energy method for the forward-backward system in Sobolev spaces, on the one hand and on a suitable vector field method to control derivatives with respect to the velocity variable, on the other hand. The careful combination of these two techniques reveals interesting phenomena applicable for Mean Field Games involving general classes of drift-diffusion operators and nonlinearities. While many prior existence theories for general Mean Field Games systems take the final datum function to be smoothing, we can allow this function to be non-smoothing, i.e. also depending locally on the final measure. Our well-posedness results hold under an appropriate smallness condition, assumed jointly on the data.