On the derivation of the homogeneous kinetic wave equation

Abstract The nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the weakly nonlinear regime with random Gaussian fields as initial data is considered. The problem is set on the torus in any dimension greater than two. A conjecture in statistical physics is that there exists a kinetic time scale depending on the frequency localization of the data and on the strength of the nonlinearity, on which the expectation of the squares of moduli of Fourier modes evolve according to an effective equation: the so‐called kinetic wave equation. When the kinetic time for our setup is 1, we prove this conjecture up to an arbitrarily small polynomial loss. When the kinetic time is larger than 1, we obtain its validity on a more restricted time scale. The key idea of the proof is the use of Feynman interaction diagrams both in the construction of an approximate solution and in the study of its nonlinear stability. We perform a truncated series expansion in the initial data, and obtain bounds in average in various function spaces for its elements. The linearized dynamics then involves a linear Schrödinger equation with a corresponding random potential whose operator norm in Bourgain spaces we are able to estimate on average. This gives a new approach for the analysis of nonlinear wave equations out of equilibrium, and gives hope that refinements of the method could help settle the conjecture.