Energy Solutions and Harnack Estimates for Nonlocal Drift–Diffusion
Version 1 / Nov 04, 2026 / CC BY 4.0
Abstract
We consider nonlocal drift–diffusion equations of order with bounded divergence-free drift. The symmetric measurable jump kernel satisfies local coercivity, a global upper form bound, and a scale-invariant bound on the intensity of long jumps. The transport form is bounded and skew-symmetric on . In the fractional energy space, distributional and variational solutions coincide and satisfy nonlinear testing identities. Viscous approximations converge strongly in to the unique solution of the Cauchy problem. For sources bounded in the cylinder, supersolutions nonnegative there satisfy a weak Harnack inequality involving the time integral of the negative exterior tail. Under this source bound, locally bounded solutions whose exterior tail belongs to in time for some are locally Hölder continuous. This also gives Hölder continuity at positive times for homogeneous global solutions with data. Under upper jumping smoothness, control of the positive tail on an earlier time interval yields the full parabolic Harnack inequality for solutions nonnegative on the full spatial slab. A kernel supported on alternating dyadic annuli satisfies all the kernel assumptions. The local estimates depend on the drift through .
Provenance statement
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Version history
- v1 · 25 pagesSubmitted by Zhenyu SunInitial depositCurrentNov 03, 2026