English

Lorentz-boosted diffusion: initial value formulation and exact solutions

Mathematical Physics 2026-02-26 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory math.MP Nuclear Theory

Abstract

It is well known that the diffusion equation, when treated as a stand-alone partial differential equation, exhibits exponential instabilities in boosted frames, which render the corresponding initial-value problem ill-posed. Recently, however, it was shown that Fick-type diffusion arises as the exact hydrodynamic sector of relativistic Fokker-Planck kinetic theory. In this work, we exploit this kinetic embedding to formulate a modified initial-value problem for one-dimensional Lorentz-boosted diffusion. We show that the resulting dynamics are well posed both forward and backward in time, provided the boosted density profiles admit a kinetic-theory realization. Such profiles form a space of band-limited functions, within which the evolution can be expressed as a discrete superposition of spatially sampled initial data, weighted by a Shannon-Whittaker-type Green function defined on the full Minkowski plane. The Green function is obtained in closed analytic form.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.21254,
  title  = {Lorentz-boosted diffusion: initial value formulation and exact solutions},
  author = {Lorenzo Gavassino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21254},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, 5 figures, comments welcome!

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:50:35.525Z