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Log-Sobolev inequalities for boundary-driven anharmonic chains

Mathematical Physics 2026-07-15 v1 Analysis of PDEs Probability

Abstract

We study the non-equilibrium steady state of a weakly anharmonic chain of NN oscillators driven at its boundary by Langevin thermostats at unequal temperatures. Under a perturbative weak-anharmonicity condition, we prove a full-gradient logarithmic Sobolev inequality whose constant is independent of the chain length NN. For homogeneous pinned chains, an additional quantitative regularity assumption yields a boundary space-time logarithmic Sobolev inequality and relative-entropy decay on the same O(N3)O(N^3) relaxation time scale as the harmonic chain. The proof extracts a finite-dimensional Gaussian component from the boundary noise and compares conditional terminal-state laws by a change of variables. The estimates are uniform over bounded positive temperatures and require no near-equilibrium assumption on their difference.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.13953,
  title  = {Log-Sobolev inequalities for boundary-driven anharmonic chains},
  author = {Jianfeng Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.13953},
  year   = {2026}
}

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29 pages