ABSTRACT.
In this seminar, we study the Vlasov–Maxwell system, a fundamental collisionless kinetic model for plasmas, posed in a three-dimensional half-space with boundaries. We begin with a brief warm-up by revisiting the one-dimensional Vlasov–Poisson system in the absence of magnetic fields, focusing on Penrose’s classical 1960 spectral criterion for linear stability and instability. We then turn to the full Vlasov–Maxwell system and discuss the major analytical difficulties introduced by electromagnetic coupling, boundary effects, and nonlinear interactions. In particular, we highlight the role of an effective gravitational force directed toward the boundary and its interplay with boundary temperature conditions. This viewpoint naturally leads us to formulate a conjectural linear instability criterion associated with boundary-induced confinement effects. Within this framework, we construct global-in-time classical solutions to the nonlinear Vlasov–Maxwell system beyond the vacuum scattering regime. Our approach combines the construction of stationary boundary equilibria with a proof of their asymptotic stability in the $L^\infty$ setting under small perturbations. This work provides a new framework for analyzing long-time plasma dynamics in bounded domains with interacting magnetic fields. To our knowledge, it yields the first construction of asymptotically stable non-vacuum steady states for the full three-dimensional nonlinear Vlasov–Maxwell system. This is joint work with Chanwoo Kim.