Sharp asymptotics for the solutions of the three-dimensional massless Vlasov-Maxwell system with small data

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic properties of the small data solutions to the massless Vlasov-Maxwell system in $3d$. We use vector field methods to derive almost optimal decay estimates in null directions for the electromagnetic field, the particle density and their derivatives. No compact support assumption in $x$ or $v$ is required on the initial data and the decay in $v$ is in particular initially optimal. Consistently with Proposition $8.1$ of \cite{dim4}, the Vlasov field is supposed to vanish initially for small velocties. In order to deal with the slow decay rate of the solutions near the light cone and to prove that the velocity support of the particle density remains bounded away from $0$, we make crucial use of the null properties of the system.


Introduction
This article is part of a series of works concerning the asymptotic behavior of small data solutions to the Vlasov-Maxwell equations. The system is a classical model for collisionless plasma and is given, for K species of particles, by 1 where • m k ≥ 0 is the mass of the particles of the species k and e k = 0 is their charge.
• The 2-form F (t, x), with (t, x) ∈ R + × R 3 , is the electromagnetic field and * F (t, x) is its Hodge dual.
In [2], we studied the massless Vlasov-Maxwell system in high dimensions (n ≥ 4) and we proved that if the particle densities initially vanish for small velocities and if certain weighted L 1 and L 2 norms of the initial data are small enough, then the unique classical solution to the system exists globally in time. Moreover, as the smallness assumption only concerns L 1 and L 2 norms, no compact support assumport assumption in x or v was required. We also obtained optimal pointwise decay estimates on the velocity averages of f k and their derivatives as well as improved decay estimates on the null components of the electromagnetic field and its derivatives. In the same article, we also proved that there exists smooth initial data such that the particle densities do not vanish for small velocities and for which (1)-(3) does not admit a local classical solution 2 . Similar results for the massive Vlasov-Maxwell system in high dimensions are also obtained in [2]. A main difference however is that f k does not have to be supported away from v = 0. The 3d massive case requires a refinement of our method and will be treated in [3]. We will also study the solutions of (1)- (3) in the exterior of a light cone. The strong decay satisfied by f k in such a region will allow us to lower the initial decay hypothesis on the electromagnetic field and to obtain asymptotics on the solutions in a simpler way than for the whole spacetime. This will be done in [4].
In this paper, we study the asymptotic properties of the small data solutions to the three-dimensional massless Vlasov-Maxwell, so that m k = 0. We start with optimal decay in v on the particle densities in the sense that we merely suppose f k (0, x, .) to be integrable in v, which is a necessary condition for the source term of the Maxwell equations to be well defined. In massive Vlasov systems, powers of |v| are often lost in order to gain time decay or to exploit null properties 3 . Our assumptions will force us to better understand the null structure of the equations. In fact, one of the goal of this article is to describe in full details the null structure of the system, which appears to be fundamental for proving integrability and controling the velocity support of the particle density.
In view of their physical meaning, the functions f k are usually supposed non negative. However, as their signs play no role in this paper and since we will consider neutral plasmas, we suppose for simplicity that K = 1 and we do not restrict the values of f 1 to R + . We also normalize the charge e 1 to 1 and we denote f 1 by f . The system can then be rewritten as ∇ µ * F µν = 0.
Note that we can recover the more common form of the Vlasov-Maxwell system using the relations so that the equations (1)-(3) can be rewritten as We choose to work with a neutral plasma to simplify the proof but the case of a non zero total charge will be covered in [3] and [4].

Previous results on small data solutions for the massive Vlasov-Maxwell system
Global existence for small data in dimension 3 was first established by Glassey-Strauss in [10] under a compact support assumption (in space and in velocity). In [9], a similar result is obtained for the nearly neutral case.
The compact support assumption in v is removed in [12] but the data still have to be compactly supported in space. Note that none of these results contain estimates on ∂ µ1 ...∂ µ k v f dv and the optimal decay rate on v f dv is not obtained by the method of [12]. They all proved decay estimates on the electromagnetic field up to first order derivatives.
In [2], we used vector field methods, developped in [5] for the electromagnetic field and [8] for the Vlasov field, in order to remove all compact support assumptions for the dimensions n ≥ 4. We then derived (almost) optimal decay on the solutions of the system and their derivatives and we described precisely the behavior of the null components of F .
Recently, Wang proved in [14] a similar result for the 3d case. Using both vector field method and Fourier analysis, he replaced the compact support assumption by strong polynomial decay hypotheses in (x, v) on f and obtained optimal pointwise decay estimates on v f dv and its derivatives.

Previous works on Vlasov systems using vector field methods
Properties of small data solutions of other Vlasov systems were obtained recently using vector field methods. First on the Vlasov-Nordström system, in [8] and [7], and the Vlasov-Poisson system (see [13]). Vector field methods led to a proof of the stability of the Minkowski spacetime for the Einstein-Vlasov system, obtained independently by [6] and [11].
Note that vector field methods can also be used to derive integrated decay for solutions to the the massless Vlasov equation on curved background such as slowly rotating Kerr spacetime (see [1]).
There exists C > 0 and ǫ 0 > 0 such that if 0 ≤ ǫ ≤ ǫ 0 , then the unique classical solution (f, F ) of the system which satisfies f (t = 0) = f 0 and F (t = 0) = F 0 is a global solution and verifies the following estimates.
• Energy bound for the electromagnetic field F : ∀ t ∈ R + , • Sharp pointwise decay estimates for the null components of L Z γ (F ): ∀ |γ| ≤ N − 2, (t, x) ∈ R + × R 3 , • Energy bound for the particle density: ∀ t ∈ R + , • Vanishing property for small velocities: • Sharp pointwise decay estimates for the velocity averages of Z β f k : ∀ |β| ≤ N − 5, z ∈ k 0 , Remark 1.2. One can prove a similar result if f 0 vanishes for the velocties v such that |v| ≤ R, with R > 0 (ǫ 0 would then also depends on R). Remark 1.3. We say that (f 0 , F 0 ) is an initial data set for the Vlasov-Maxwell system if the function f 0 : R 3 x × R 3 v \ {0} → R and F 0 are both sufficiently regular and satisfy the constraint equations Remark 1.4. The neutral hypothesis (4) is a necessary condition for R 3 (1 + r) 2 |F | 2 dx to be finite. This means that, for a sufficiently regular solution to the Vlasov-Maxwell system (f, F ), the total electromagnetic charge which is a conserved quantity in t, vanishes. More precisely, if Q(0) = 0, then We prove in Appendix C that the derivatives of F are automatically chargeless, whether or not Q vanishes. 4 We could avoid any hypotheses on the derivatives of order N + 1 and N + 2 of F 0 (see Remark 7.6 for more details).

Strategy of the proof and main difficulties
The proof of Theorem 1.1 is based on energy and vector field methods and essentially relies on bounding sufficiently well the spacetime integrals of the commuted equations. The solutions of the massless Vlasov equation enjoy improved decay estimates in the null directions. More precisely, one can already see that with the following estimate (see Lemma 2.11 and Proposition 3.6), for g a solution to the free transport equation This strong decay is a key element of our proof. Without it, we would have to consider modifications of the commutation vector fields of the free transport operator as in [7], [13], [6] and [11] for, respectively, the Vlasov-Nordström, the Vlasov-Poisson and the Einstein-Vlasov systems. As the particles are massless, the characteristics of the transport equation and those of the Maxwell equations have the same velocity 5 . The consequence is that, in a product such as L Z γ (F ). Z β f , we cannot transform a |t − r| decay in a t + r one as it is done, in view of support consideration, for the massive case with compactly supported initial data. We are then led to carefully study the null structure of the equations, and in particular of the non linearities such as with Z a Killing vector field and Z its complete lift 6 . The problem is that, for g solution to |v|∂ t + v i ∂ i g = 0, ∂ v g essentially behaves as (1 + t + r)∂ t,x g and the electromagnetic field, as a solution of a wave equation, only decay with a rate of (1 + t + r) −1 in the t + r direction. However, from [5], we know that certain null components of the Maxwell field are expected to behave better than others. The same is true for the null components of the velocity vector v as it is suggested by (5). Moreover, we also know from [2] that v L allows us to take advantage of the t − r decay as it permits to estimate spacetime integrals by using a null foliation. Finally, the radial component of (0, The null structure of (6) is then studied in Lemma 4.1 and we can observe that each term contains at least one good component. Another problem, specific to massless particles, arises from small velocities. We already observed in Section 8 of [2] that the velocity part V of the characteristics of can reach 0 in finite time. The consequence is that if f does not initially vanish for small velocities, the Vlasov-Maxwell system could not admit a local classical solution. This issue is reflected in the energy estimates through, schematically, where ψ is a homogeneous function of degree 0 in v. One cannot hope to close such an estimate using say Grönwall inequality due to the factor of 1 |v| appearing in the error term on the right hand side. In [2], we take advantage of the strong decay rate of the electromagnetic field, given by the high dimensions, to prove that the velocity support of f remains bounded away from 0 if initially true. The slow decay of F in dimension 3 forces us to exploit the null structure of the equations satisfied by the characteristics of (7) in order to recover this result. The strong decay rate satisfied by the radial component of the electric field ρ(F ) plays a fundamental role here. We point out that this difficulty is not present in the Einstein-Vlasov system as the Vlasov equation can be written, for a metric g and defined in terms of the cotangent variables, as One can observe that the homogeneity in v of the non linearity of the Vlasov equation is the same than the one of |v|∂ t + v i ∂ i , so that the velocity part of the characteristics cannot reach 0 in finite time time. 5 Note that this is not the case for particles of mass m > 0 since the free transport operator is then m 2 + |v| 2 ∂t + v i ∂ i . 6 The expression of the complete lift of a vector field of the Minkowski space is presented in Definition 2.4.

Structure of the paper
Section 2 presents the notations used in this article, basic results on the electromagnetic field and its null decomposition. The commutation vector fields are introduced in Subsection 2.4 and the source terms of the commuted equations are descibed in Subsection 2.5. Subsection 2.6 contains fundamental properties on the null components of the velocity vector. In Section 3, we introduce the norms used to study the Vlasov-Maxwell system and we present energy estimates in order to control them. We then exploit these energy norms to obtain pointwise decay estimates on both fields through Klainerman-Sobolev type inequalities. Lemma 4.1, proved in Section 4, is of fundamental importance in this work since it depicts the null structure of the non linearities of the transport equations. In section 5, we set up the bootstrap assumptions, discuss their immediate consequences and describe the main steps of the proof of Theorem 1.1. Sections 6 to 8 concern respectively the improvement of the bounds on the distribution function, the proof of L 2 estimates for the velocity averages of its higher order derivatives and the improvement of the estimates on the electromagnetic field energies. In Appendix A, we prove that the Vlasov field vanishes for small velocities. In Appendix B we expose how to bound the energy norms of f and F in terms of weighted L 1 and L 2 norms of the initial data. We prove in Appendix C that the derivatives of F , for (f, F ) a sufficiently regular solution to the Vlasov-Maxwell system, are automatically chargeless. Finally, Appendix D contains the proof of certain results concerning the null decomposition of the electromagnetic field.

Basic notations
In this paper we work on the 3 + 1 dimensionsal Minkowski spacetime (R 3+1 , η). We will use two sets of coordinates, the Cartesian (t, x 1 , x 2 , x 3 ), in which η = diag(−1, 1, 1, 1), and null coordinates (u, u, ω 1 , ω 2 ), where u = t + r, u = t − r and (ω 1 , ω 2 ) are spherical variables, which are spherical coordinates on the spheres (t, r) = constant. These coordinates are defined globally on R 3+1 apart from the usual degeneration of spherical coordinates and at r = 0. We will also use the following classical weights, We denote by (e 1 , e 2 ) an orthonormal basis on the spheres and by / ∇ (respectively / div) the intrinsic covariant differentiation (respectively divergence operator) on the spheres (t, r) = constant. Capital Latin indices (such as A or B) will always correspond to spherical variables. The null derivatives are defined by so that L(u) = 2, L(u) = 0, L(u) = 0 and L(u) = 2.
The velocity vector (v µ ) 0≤µ≤3 is parametrized by (v i ) 1≤i≤3 and v 0 = |v| since we study massless particles. We introduce T , the operator defined, for all sufficiently regular function f : We will use the notation ∇ v g := (0, ∂ v 1 g, ∂ v 2 g, ∂ v 3 g) so that (1) can be rewritten Remark 2.1. As we study massless particles, the functions considered in this paper will not be defined for v = 0. However, for simplicity and since {v = 0} has Lebesgue measure 0, we will consider integrals over R 3 v . Moreover, the distribution function f will be supported away from v = 0 during the proof of Theorem 1.1. We will use the notation D 1 D 2 for an inequality such as D 1 ≤ CD 2 , where C > 0 is a positive constant independent of the solutions but which could depend on N ∈ N, the maximal order of commutation. Finally we will raise and lower indices using the Minkowski metric η.

The problem of the small velocities
For technical reasons, we will use all along this paper a fixed cutoff function χ such that χ = 1 on [1, +∞[ and χ = 0 on ] − ∞, 1 2 ]. We introduce the operator As mentionned earlier, we proved in Section 8 of [2] that because of the small velocities, there exists initial data sets for which the Vlasov-Maxwell system does not admit a local classical solution. The main idea of the proof consists in studying characteristics such that their velocity part reaches 0 in finite time. This is why we suppose in Theorem 1.1 that the Vlasov field vanishes initially for small velocities and one step of the proof will be to verify that this property remains true for all t ∈ R + . To circumvent difficulties related to characteristics reaching v = 0, we will rather first define (f, F ) as the solution to (2) − (3) and T χ F (f ) = 0. Notice that none of the characteristics of the operator T χ Consequently, if |V (s)| < 1 2 , then V (t) = V (s) for all t ≥ s. The goal will then to prove that if f (0, ., .) vanishes for all |v| ≤ 3, so does f (t, ., .) for all |v| ≤ 1, implying that T F (f ) = 0 and that (f, F ) is a solution to the Vlasov-Maxwell system (1)-(3).

Basic tools for the study of the electromagnetic field
As we describe the electromagnetic field in geometric form, it will be represented throughout this article by a 2-form. Let F be a 2-form defined on [0, T [×R 3 x . Its null decomposition (α(F ), α(F ), ρ(F ), σ(F )), introduced by [5], is defined by The Hodge dual * F of F is the 2-form given by * where ε λσµν are the components of the Levi-Civita symbol, and its energy-momentum tensor is Proof. Consider for instance ∇ µ G µ1 = J 1 and ∇ i * G i0 = 0. As The equivalence of the two systems can be obtained by similar computations.
We can then compute the divergence of the energy momentum tensor of an electromagnetic field. Corollary 2.3. Let G and J be as in the previous lemma. Then, ∇ µ T [G] µν = G νλ J λ .
Proof. Using the previous lemma, we have Hence, Finally, the null components of the energy-momentum tensor of a 2-form G are given by

The vector fields of the Poincaré group and their complete lifts
We present in this section the commutation vector fields for the Maxwell equations and those for the relativistic transport operator. Let P be the generators of the Poincaré algebra, i.e. the set containing We also consider K := P ∪ {S}, where S = x µ ∂ µ is the scaling vector field and O := {Ω 12 , Ω 13 , Ω 23 }, the set of the rotational vector fields. The vector fields of K are well known for commuting with the wave and the Maxwell equations (see Proposition 2.8 below). However, to commute the operator T = v µ ∂ µ , one should consider, as in [8], the complete lifts of the vector fields of P.
Definition 2.4. Let Γ be a vector field of the form Γ β ∂ β . Then, the complete lift Γ of Γ is defined by We then have ∂ µ = ∂ µ for all 0 ≤ µ ≤ 3, and One can check that [T, Z] = 0 for all Z ∈ P. As we also have [T, S] = T , we consider and we will, for simplicity, denote by Z an arbitrary vector field of P 0 , even if S is not a complete lift. These vector fields and the averaging in v almost commute in the following sense.
→ R be a sufficiently regular function. We have, almost everywhere, Proof. Let us consider, for instance, the case where Z = Ω 12 = x 1 ∂ 2 − x 2 ∂ 1 . Then, integrating by parts in v, we have almost everywhere Ω 12 (f ) dv. 7 In this article, we will denote ∂ x i , for 1 ≤ i ≤ 3, by ∂ i and sometimes ∂t by ∂ 0 .
The vector space engendered by each of the sets defined in this section is an algebra.
Lemma 2.6. Let L be either P 0 , K, P or O. Then for all (Z 1 , Z 2 ) ∈ L 2 , [Z 1 , Z 2 ] is a linear combination of vector fields of L.
We consider an ordering on each of the sets O, P, K and P 0 . We take orderings such that, if P = {Z i / 1 ≤ i ≤ |P|}, then K = {Z i / 1 ≤ i ≤ |K|}, with Z |K| = S, and If L denotes O, P, K or P 0 , and β ∈ {1, ..., |L|} q , with q ∈ N * , we will denote the differential operator Γ β1 ...Γ βr ∈ L |β| by Γ β . For a vector field Y , we will denote by L Y the Lie derivative with respect to Y and if Z γ ∈ K q , we will write L Z γ for L Z γ 1 ...L Z γq .
Let us recall, by the following classical result, that the derivatives tangential to the cone behave better than others.
Lemma 2.7. The following relations hold, where the C i,j A are uniformly bounded and depend only on spherical variables. We also have Finally, we introduce the vector field which will be used as a multiplier.

Commutation of the Vlasov-Maxwell system
Let us start by proving the following result. For convenience, we extend the Kronecker symbol to vector fields, i.e. δ X,Y = 1 if X = Y and δ X,Y = 0 otherwise. Lemma 2.8. Let G be a 2-form and g a function, both sufficiently regular. For all Z ∈ P 0 , Note now that The first identity is then implied by Recall now that if 8 Z ∈ K, One then only have to notice that L S (J(g)) = J(Sg) + J(g) and ∀ Z ∈ P, L Z (J(g)) = J( Zg).
This follows from L Z (J(g)) ν = Z(J(g) ν ) + ∂ ν Z λ J(g) λ and integration by parts in v. For instance, Iterating Lemma 2.8, we can describe the form of the source terms of the commuted Vlasov-Maxwell equations.
Proposition 2.9. Let (f, F ) be a sufficiently regular solution to the Vlasov-Maxwell system (1)-(3) and Z β ∈ K |β| . There exists integers n β γ,κ and m β ξ such that The main observation is that the structure of the non-linearity F (v, ∇ v f ) is conserved after commutation, which is important since if the source terms of the Vlasov equation behaved as v 0 |F ||∂ v f |, we would not be able to close the energy estimates for the Vlasov field. The other conserved structure is J(f ), which is also crucial since a source term behaving as v |f |dv would prevent us to close the energy estimates for the electromagnetic field.

Weights preserved by the flow and null components of the velocity vector
We designate the null components of the velocity vector by For simplicity we will write v A instead of v eA . We introduce, as in [8], the following set of weights They are preserved by the flow of T and by the action of P 0 . More precisely, we have the following result. Lemma 2.10. Let z ∈ k 1 and Z ∈ P 0 . Then, Proof. The first property ensues from straightforward computations. For the second one, let us consider for instance , Ω 12 and Ω 02 . We have The other cases are similar and the third property follows directly from the second one.
The following inequalities, which should be compared to those of Lemma 2.7, suggest how we will use these weights.
Proof. Note first that where C i,j A are bounded functions depending only on the spherical variables such as re A = C i,j A Ω i,j . This gives the first two estimates. For the last one, use also that 4r 2 v L v L = k<l |v 0 z kl | 2 , which comes from Remark 2.12. There are certain differences with the massive case, where v 0 = m 2 + |v| 2 and m > 0.
• The inequality 1 v 0 v L does not hold.
• As x i v i − tv 0 does not commute with the massive relativistic transport operator, we rather consider the set of weights |z| is merely satisfied in the exterior of the light cone.

Various subsets of the Minkowski spacetime
We introduce here several subsets of the Minkowski space depending on t ∈ R + , r ∈ R + , u ∈ R. Let S t,r , Σ t , C u (t) and V u (t), be the sets defined as The volum form on C u (t) is given by dC u (t) = √ 2 −1 r 2 dudS 2 , where dS 2 is the standard metric on the 2 dimensional unit sphere. In view of applying the divergence theorem, we also introduce We also introduce a dyadic partition of R + by considering the sequence (t i ) i∈N and the functions (T i (t)) i∈N defined by We then define the troncated cones C i u (t) adapted to this partition by The following lemma will be used several times during this paper. It depicts that we can foliate Note that the sum over i is in fact finite. The second foliation is useful to take advantage of decay in the The last foliation will be used to take advantage of time decay on C u (t) as we merely have τ −1

Energy and pointwise decay estimates
In this section, we recall classical energy estimates for both the electromagnetic field and the Vlasov field and how obtain pointwise decay estimates from them.

Energy estimates
For the Vlasov field, we will use the following energy estimate.
→ R be two sufficiently regular functions and F a sufficiently regular 2-form. Then, g, the unique classical solution of satisfies, for all t ∈ [0, T [, the following estimates, Proof. Note first that as which implies the result.
We then define, for (Q, q) ∈ N 2 , We now introduce the energy norms, related to the electromagnetic field, used in this paper. We consider, for the remaining of this section, G a sufficiently regular 2-form defined on [0, T [×R 3 and we denote by (α, α, ρ, σ) its null decomposition. We moreover suppose that G satisfies For N ∈ N * , we also introduce . The second energy norm will then permit us to obtain the optimal decay rate in the t + r direction on α, which will be crucial for closing the energy estimates for the Vlasov field.
The following energy estimates hold.

Decay estimates for velocity averages
We prove in this subsection an L ∞ − L 1 and an L 2 − L 1 Klainerman-Sobolev inequality for velocity averages. The L ∞ − L 1 one was originally proved in [8] (see Theorem 6) and we propose here a shorter proof. Let us start with the following lemma. .
Proof. Let ω ∈ S 2 and (θ, ϕ) a local coordinate map in a neighborhood of w. By the symmetry of the sphere we can suppose that θ and ϕ take their values in an interval of a size independent of ω. Using a one dimensional Sobolev inequality, that |∂ θ u| Ω∈O |Ωu| and Lemma 2.
We obtain similarly that , which implies the first inequality. For the other one, by a standard L 2 − L 1 Sobolev inequality, one have .
It then remains to apply Lemma 2.5 again.
be a sufficiently regular function, z ∈ k 0 and j ∈ N. Then, .
• If 1 + t ≤ 2|x|, one have, using Lemmas 2.7 and 2.5, It then remains to apply Lemma 3.5 and to remark that τ + r in the region considered.
• Otherwise 1 + t ≥ 2|x|, so that, with τ := 1 + t, Thus, for all sufficiently regular function h, 1 ≤ i ≤ 3 and almost all |y| ≤ 1 4 , we have, using Lemmas 2.7 and then 2.5, Hence, using alternatively three times a one dimensional Sobolev inequality and then (14), it comes, The result then follows from the change of variables z = τ y and that τ − ≤ τ + τ in the region studied.
We now turn on the L 2 − L 1 Klainerman-Sobolev inequality.
be a sufficiently regular function, z ∈ k 0 and j ∈ N. Then, .
Proof. As previously, we can restrict the proof to the case j = 0. We introduce δ = 1 4 for convenience and we suppose first that t ≥ 1. The idea is classical and consists in splitting Σ t into the three domains, |x| ≤ t 2 , |x| ≥ 3 2 t and 1 2 t ≤ |x| ≤ 3 2 t. • Step 1, the interior region. Applying a local two-dimensional L 2 − L 1 Sobolev inequality to the function As t − |tx| ≥ 1 4 t on the domain of integration since |x| ≤ 1 2 + δ ≤ 3 4 , Lemmas 2.7 and 2.5 gives us Now, one can obtain similarly, using a one-dimensional L 2 − L 1 Sobolev inequality in the variable x 3 , that we finally obtain, by the change of variables y = tx, • Step 2, the exterior region. Let us introduce, for i ∈ N, the following sets 9 In the domain considered here, where |x| ≥ 3 2 t, we have τ + |x| but we cannot follow exactly what we have done for the interior region as we cannot view |x| as a parameter. However, as for i ∈ N, 2 i t ∼ τ + on X i and we can apply similar operations to x → v |f |(t, 2 i tx, v)dv as to x → v |f |(t, tx, v)dv previously and obtain As τ 2 + τ − 2 3i t 3 on X i , we finally obtain by the change of variables y = 2 i tx, . 9 The contants hidden in in the upcoming computations will not depend on i. 16 . (16) • Step 3, the remaining domain. We now focus on the region 1 2 t ≤ |x| ≤ 3 2 t. We will obtain the τ + integrated decay with the rotational vector fields through Sobolev inequalities on the spheres. To obtain the √ τ − decay, note first that |u| ≤ 1 2 t in this region (recall that u = t − |x|). The idea to capture the decay in u will then be to devide the domain in the disjoint union of the sets Let ω ∈ S 2 . Applying a L 2 − L 1 Sobolev inequality to g : Since 1 4 2 −i t ≤ |t − |t − 2 −i ts|| for all i ∈ N * and 1 4 ≤ |s| ≤ 5 4 , it comes, using Lemmas 2.7 and 2.5 that The change of variables As previously with the domains X i and Y i , we take the sum over i ∈ N * and we get By simpler operations, one can also obtain that Integrating each side of these inequalities over S 2 and applying Proposition 3.5 to the right hand sides, we get Finally, multiply both side of the inequality by t 2 and use τ + t ≤ 2r on the domain of integration in order to obtain 1 2 t≤r≤ 3 2 t ω∈S 2 The result then follows from (15), (16) and (17). The case t ≤ 1 can be treated similarly, repeating the arguments of Steps 1 and 2 since in that case τ 2 + τ − (1 + r) 3 and

Pointwise Decay estimates for the electromagnetic field
In this section, we follow mostly [5]. We first present certain identities and inequalities between quantities linked to the null decomposition of a 2-form (see Section 2.3 for its definition), then we recall Sobolev inequalities and, finally, we prove the desired pointwise decay estimates for the electromagnetic field. For the remaining of this section, we consider G a 2-form and J a 1-form, both sufficiently regular and defined on [0, T [×R 3 , such that Aside from Lemma 3.10 and the estimate on α(G) in Proposition 3.13, all the result of this subsection apply to a general 2-form.
We now give a more precise version of Lemma 3.3 of [5].
Lemma 3.9. Denoting by ζ any of the null component α, α, ρ or σ, we have The following equation will be useful in order to obtain a strong decay estimate on α(G).
Lemma 3.10. Denoting by (α, α, ρ, σ) the null decomposition of G, we have The following result will allow us to treat part of the interior of the light cone.
Lemma 3.11. Let U be a smooth tensor field defined on [0, T [×R 3 . Then, Proof. As |L Z γ (U )| |β|≤|γ| µ,ν |Z β (U µν )|, it suffices to prove the result for each component of the tensor and we can assume that U is a scalar function. Let (t, x) ∈ [0, T [×R 3 such that |x| ≤ 1 + 1 2 t. Apply a standard L 2 Sobolev inequality to V : y → U (t, x + 1+t 4 y) and then make a change of variables to get Observe now that |y − x| ≤ 1+t 4 implies |y| ≤ 2 + 3 4 t and that 1 + t τ − on that domain. Consequently, using Lemma 2.7 and that [Z, ∂], for Z ∈ K, is either 0 or a translation, we have We refer to Lemma 2.3 of [5] for a proof of the following two Sobolev inequalities, which will permit us to deal with the remaining region.
Lemma 3.12. Let U be a sufficiently regular tensor field defined on R 3 and denote |β|≤k |L Ω β (U )| 2 , where There exists an absolute constant C > 0, independent of U , such that • Decay estimates for G. We are now ready to prove the pointwise decay estimates on the electromagnetic field.
Proof. We fix for all this proof (t, x) ∈ [0, T [×R 3 . If |x| ≤ 1 + 1 2 t, the result follows from Proposition 3.11. We then suppose |x| ≥ 1 + t 2 . During this proof, Ω β will always denote a combination of rotational vector fields, i.e. Ω β ∈ O |β| . Let ζ be either α, ρ or σ. As ∇ ∂r and L Ω commute with the null decomposition (see Lemma 3.8), Lemma 3.12 gives us As ∇ ∂r commute with L Ω as well as with the null decomposition (see Lemma 3.8), we have, using 2∂ r = L−L and Lemma 3.9, (19) Since τ + r ≤ τ + in the region considered, we finally obtain We improve now the estimate on α. As ∇ µ L Ω (G) µν = L Ω (J) ν and ∇ µ * L Ω (G) µν = 0 for all Ω ∈ O, we have according to (18) that Consequently, we get using Lemma 3.9 that for all Ω ∈ O, Applying the second inequality of Lemma 3.12 and using this time (20) instead of (19), it comes Applying the first inequality of Lemma 3.12 to τ − log − k 2 (1+τ − )α and using the same arguments as previously, one have 4 The null structure of the non linearity L Z γ (F ) v, ∇ v Z β f In order to take advantage of the null structure of the Vlasov equation, we will expand quantities such as L Z γ (F ) (v, ∇ v g), with g a regular function, in null coordinates. We then use the following lemma.
Proof. Expanding G(v, ∇ v g) with null components, we obtain We bound the angular components of ∇ v g by merely Remark 4.2. Let us explain how this lemma reflects the null structure of the system. For this, we write D 1 ≺ D 2 if D 2 is expected to behave better than D 1 . Recall that we have the following hierarchies between the null components of G, v and ∇ v g.
We can then notice that α is hit by v L or v A (∇ v g) r , ρ by (∇ v g) r and σ by v A .

Bootstrap assumptions and strategy of the proof
Let N ≥ 10 and (f 0 , F 0 ) be an initial data set satisfying the assumptions of Theorem 1.1. Then, by a local well-posedness argument, there exists a unique maximal solution (f, F ) arising from this data to the system 11 Applying Proposition B.1 and considering possibly ǫ 1 = C 1 ǫ, with C 1 a constant depending only on N , we can suppose without loss of generality that E 2 is the maximum domain of (f, F ) and T ∈]0, T * [ be the largest time such that 12 , for all t ∈ [0, T ], 10 Note that (∇vg) L = − (∇vg) L = (∇vg) r . 11 We refer to Subsection 2.2 for the reasons which bring us to define (f, F ) as a solution to these equations rather than the Vlasov-Maxwell system. 12 Notice that such a T > 0 exists by a standard continuity argument.
where C > 0 is a positive constant which will be specified later. The third bootstrap assumption is here for convenience, we could avoid it but it would complicate the proof. Before presenting our strategy, let us write the immediate consequences of these bootstrap assumptions. Using the Klainerman-Sobolev inequality of Proposition 3.6 and the bootstrap assumption (23), one have (28) Applying the Klainerman-Sobolev inequality of Proposition 3.7, Lemma 2.11 and using (23) and (24), we get (29) By Proposition 3.13, commutation formula of Proposition 2.9, the bootstrap assumptions (26), (27), (25) and the estimate (29), we obtain that, for all (t, x) ∈ [0, T [×R 3 and |γ| ≤ N − 2, Applying Proposition A.1, one obtain that f vanishes for small velocities, i.e.
In view of the support of χ, we then obtain that T  27), which will imply Theorem 1.1 as it will prove that T = T * and then T * = +∞. The proof is divided in three parts.
1. First, we improve the bootstrap assumptions (23) and (24) by using Proposition 3.1. To bound the spacetime integrals arising from this energy estimate, we make crucial use of the null structure of the non linearity L Z γ (F )(v, ∇ v Z β f ) as well as (30), (31) and (28). (27), the next step consists in proving L 2 estimates on quantities such as v |z Z β f |dv. To treat the higher order derivatives, we rewrite all transport equations as an inhomogeneous system of Vlasov equations. To handle the homogenous part, we take advantage of the smallness assumption on the N + 3 derivatives of f at t = 0, (30) and (31). The inhomogenous part G will be schematically decomposed as a product KY , with v |Y |dv a decaying function and |K| 2 Y an integrable function in (x, v).

Then, in of view of improving (25), (26) and
3. Finally, we improve the bounds on the energy norms of the electromagnetic field through Proposition 3.4. The null structure of the source terms of the Maxwell equations is fundamental for us here.
6 Improvement of the energy bound on the particle density The purpose of this section is to improve the bootstrap assymptions (23) and (24). Note first that  Σs Similarly, the following result implies, if ǫ is small enough, that E 1 N [f ](t) ≤ 3ǫ log(3 + t) for all t ∈ [0, T [. Proposition 6.2. Let z ∈ k 0 , |ζ| ≤ N , γ and ξ such that |γ| + |ξ| ≤ N and |ξ| ≤ N − 1. We have, The proofs are based on the analysis, through Lemma 4.1, of quantities such as L Z γ (F ) v, ∇ v Z β f . We then prove the following preparatory lemma.
) be a sufficiently regular function. Then, Proof. Let (α, α, ρ, σ) be the null decomposition of L Z γ (F ). Using Lemma 4.1, we have According to the pointwise estimates (30), (31) and the inequality |v A | √ v 0 v L (see Lemma 2.11), one have which implies the first inequality. The second one follows directly since, by Lemma 2.10, Z∈ P0 | Z(z)| w∈k0 |w|.
The remaining of the section is devoted to the proof of Propositions 6.1 and 6.2.
Hence, following the computations of Subsection 6.1 and using that E 1 N [f ](t) ≤ 4 log(3 + t) by the bootstrap assumption (24), we get We now consider the cases where |γ| ≥ N − 1, so that |ξ| ≤ 1. Let us denote the null decomposition of L Z γ (F ) by (α, α, ρ, σ). Using Lemma 4.1 and that 1 ≤ v 0 on the support of f , we are led to bound, for all |β| = |κ| + 1 ≤ 2, the following integrals, Using τ + v L + τ + |v A | v 0 w∈k0 |w| (which comes from Lemmas 2.11), the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, the bootstrap assumption (27) and the estimate (29), it comes For I F , in order to apply Lemma 2.13, notice first that we have by the estimate (28), for .
Hence, using τ + |v A | v 0 w∈k0 |w|, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the bootstrap assumption (26), it comes This concludes the proof and the improvement of the bootstrap assumptions (23) and (24).

L 2 estimates on the velocity averages of the Vlasov field
In view of the energy estimate of Proposition 3.4, we have to prove L 2 x estimates on quantities such as v |z Z β f |dv, for |β| ≤ N . If |β| ≤ N − 2, we can use a Klainerman-Sobolev inequality to obtain a sufficient decay rate (see Proposition 7.9 below). The main part of this section then consists in deriving such estimates for |β| ≥ N − 1. For this purpose, we follow the strategy used in [8] (Section 4.5.7) and adapted in [2] for the Vlasov-Maxwell system. Contrary to [2], we will have to keep more of the null structure of the system. This will force us to add a new hierarchy on the functions studied here. Let us first rewrite the system and then we will explain how we will proceed. Let I 1 and the I 2 be the following ordered sets, We also consider, for N − 5 ≤ k ≤ N , I k 1 := {β ∈ I 1 / |β| = k}, and two vector valued fields R and W of respective length |I 1 | and |I 2 | such that We will sometimes abusively write i ∈ I k 1 instead of β 1,i ∈ I k 1 . Let us denote by V the module over the ring . We now rewrite the Vlasov equations satisfied by R and W .

Lemma 7.2. There exists three matrix valued functions
Note also, using (28), that Proof. One only has to apply the commutation formula of Proposition 2.9 to Z β1,i f or Z β2,i f and to replace each quantity such as Z κ f , for |κ| = N − 5, by the corresponding component of R or W . If |κ| = N − 5, we replace it by the corresponding component of R.
The goal is to obtain an L 2 estimate on R. and then prove L 2 estimates on the velocity averages of H and G. To do it, we will schematically establish that G = KW , with K a matrix such that E[KKW ] do not growth too fast, and then use the pointwise decay estimates on v |z 2 W |dv to obtain the expected decay rate on v |G|dv L 2 x . For v |H|dv L 2 x , we will make crucial use of Klainerman-Sobolev inequalities so that we will need to commute the transport equation satisfied by H and prove L 1 bounds such as we made in the proof of Proposition 6.1. Contrary to what we did in [2], we keep the v derivatives in order to take advantage of the good behavior of radial component of ∇ v g. This is why we put the derivatives of order N − 5 in both R and W .
Remark 7.4. If we proceed as in [2], we would not be able to use the estimate (∇ v g) r ∼ τ − Zg and an analogous result to Lemma 4.1 would give the term τ + |α| |v A | v 0 | Zg|. In our case (the three dimensional one), a lack of decay in the t + r direction prevents us to deal with it.
Proof. If H vanishes for all |v| ≤ 1, we have T F (H) + AH = 0. Hence, according to Proposition 2.9, the source terms which arise from the commutator [T F , Z β ] can be bounded by terms such as those described in this lemma, with j = i. The other ones come from Z β (T F (H i )) (use Lemma 7.2, Remark 7.3 and Lemma 2.8 to check that they are of the researched form).

The inhomogenous system
Start by noticing that G vanishes for all |v| ≤ 1 since G = R − H. We then deduce from χ(|v|) = 1 for all |v| ≥ 1 that G satisfies T F (G) + AG = BW . To derive an L 2 estimate on G, we cannot commute the transport equation because B contains top order derivatives of the electromagnetic field. Instead, we follow the methodology of [8] (see Subsection 4.5.7). We kept the v derivatives of G in the matrix A so that we could better use the null structure. In order to obtain L 1 bounds on quantities introduced below, we now need to rewrite these v derivatives. This is the purpose of the following lemma.
Lemma 7.7. There exists p ≥ 1, a vector valued field Y of length p, which vanishes for |v| ≤ 1, and three matrix valued functions A : Moreover, A and B are such that, if i ∈ 1, |I 1 | , T F (G i ) can be bounded by a linear combination of terms of the form, where j ∈ 1, |I 1 | , |γ| ≤ 5, q ∈ 1, p , |ξ| ≤ N and z ∈ V . Similarly, D is such that, if i ∈ 1, p , T F (Y i ) can be bounded by a linear combination of terms of the form, where j ∈ 1, p and |γ| ≤ N − 5.
Proof. The strategy of the proof is the following. If ∂ v k G j appears in T F (G) + AG = BW , then, by Lemma 7.2, j ∈ I k 1 , with N − 5 ≤ k ≤ N − 1. We then transform it with v 0 ∂ v k = Ω 0k − x k ∂ t − t∂ k and express it, with controlable error terms, as a combination of (G l ) l∈I k+1 1 . The other manipulations are similar to those made in Section 6 when we applied Lemma 4.1. Let us denote, for j ∈ I 1 \ I N 1 and Z ∈ P 0 , by j Z the index such that R j Z = Z Z β1,j f = ZR j . Hence, by (34) and since R = H + G, we have, for all j ∈ I 1 \ I N 1 , Let p 0 := |I 2 | + |I 1 \ I N 1 | and Y 0 a vector valued field 14 of length p 0 containing each component of W and each G j Z − ZG j , for j ∈ I 1 \ I N 1 . We order the components of Y 0 such as Y 0 In view of (35) and Lemma 7.2, v |z 2 Y 0 |dv satisfies the desired pointwise decay estimate on v |z 2 Y |dv. We now fix i ∈ I 1 . Applying Lemma 7.2, one can see that T F (G i ) can be written as a linear combination of the following terms.
in null components using formula (21). We now rewrite the angular For the radial component, use (22) to obtain This concludes the construction of A, B. To obtain an equation on Y 0 , we will see that we need to consider a bigger vector than Y 0 . Let i ∈ 1, p 0 . If Y 0 i = W q , with q ∈ I 2 , we can build the line i of D using Lemmas 7.2 and 4.1. Otherwise, Y 0 i = ZH j − H j Z and by Lemma 7.5 we see that functions such as ∂ v ZH r , with |β 1,r | < |β 1,j |, appear in certain source terms of T F (Y 0 i ). We then consider the vector valued field Y containing Y 0 and all the quantities Z κ H j such as β 1,j ∈ I N −5+k 1 and |κ| + k ≤ 5. It remains to use (34) and Lemmas 7.5, 4.1.
Consider now K satisfying T χ F (K) + χAK + χKD = χB and K(0, ., .) = 0. Hence, KY = G since they both initially vanish and T F (KY ) + AKY = BY in view of the velocity support of Y . The goal now is to control the energy We will then be naturally led to use that Proposition 7.8. If ǫ is small enough, we have E G (t) ǫ log 2 (3 + t) for all t ∈ [0, T [. 14 Y 0 will be a subvector of the vector Y of the lemma.
Proof. Let T 0 ∈ [0, T [ the largest time such that E G (t) ǫ log 2 (3 + t) for all t ∈ [0, T 0 [. By continuity, T 0 > 0. The remaining of the proof consists in improving this bootstrap assumption, which would imply the result. The computations will be similar as those of the proof of Proposition 6.2. Let i ∈ 1, |I 1 | and (j, q) ∈ 1, p 2 . According to the energy estimate of Proposition 3.1 and (36), it suffices to prove that Σs According to Proposition 7.7 and (33), one have, using E G (t) ǫ log 2 (3 + t) and 1 ≤ v 0 on the support of Y , We now turn on (38), where the electromagnetic field is differentiated too many times to be estimated pointwise. According to Proposition 7.7, 1 ≤ v 0 on the support of Y and using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in v, we can bound v |B j i K j i Y q | dv v 0 by a linear combination of terms of the form where |ξ| ≤ N and (α ξ , α ξ , ρ ξ , σ ξ ) is the null decomposition of L Z ξ (F ). Now, fix |ξ| ≤ N . Using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in x, the bootstrap assumption (27) and By the inequality 2ab ≤ a 2 + b 2 and τ 2 so that, by Lemma 2.13 and the bootstrap assumption (26) This concludes the improvement of the bootstrap assumption on E G and then the proof.

The L 2 estimates
In order to improve the bound on the electromagnetic field energy, we will use the following estimates.
Proof. The cases |β| ≤ N − 4 ensue from (29). Suppose now that |β| ≥ N − 3, so that there exists j ∈ 1, |I 1 | such that Z β f = H j + G j . It then suffices to prove that both H j and G j satisfy such L 2 estimates. For H j , one only has to use E H ≤ 3ǫ on [0, T [ and the Klainerman-Sobolev inequality of Proposition 3.7. For G j , recall that G j = K q j Y q and use v |z 2 Y |dv ǫτ −2 + , which comes from Proposition 7.7, and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in v in order to obtain v |zG j | dv It then remains to use Proposition 7.8, which gives E G (t) ǫ log 2 (3 + t).
Combining this Proposition with the inequality r|v A | v 0 w∈k0 |w| (see Lemma 2.11), one can then improve the bootstrap assumption (25) if ǫ is small enough.
Fix |β| ≤ N , |γ| ≤ N , denote by (α, α, ρ, σ) the null decomposition of L Z γ (F ) and recall that K in null coordinates, we can observe that it suffices to prove that, Σs v Using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in x, τ Lemmas 2.11), the bootstrap assumption (26) and Proposition 7.9, we have Similarly, using These two estimates allow us to improve the bootstrap assumptions (26) and (27) if ǫ is small enough, which concludes the proof.
The aim of this section is to prove the following result.
Proposition A.1. Let f be a classical solution to T χ F (f ) = 0 such that f (0, ., v) = 0 for all |v| ≤ 3. Then if ǫ is small enough, we have The proof is based on the study of the characteristics of the system. As f 0 (., v) = 0 for all |v| ≤ 3, we consider (x, v) ∈ R 3 × R 3 such that |v| ≥ 3 and (X, V ) the characteristic of the operator T χ F such that (X(0), V (0)) = (x, v). Our goal is to prove inf [0,T [ |V | ≥ 1, which would imply Proposition A.1. Then, suppose that |V | reaches the value 1 and define As V is continuous, t 0 and t 1 are well defined. In view of the support of χ, (X, V ) satisfies the following system of ODE on [t 0 , t 1 ], We then deduce, since F is a 2-form, that Before presenting the strategy of the proof, let us introduce certain subsets of [t 0 , t 1 ] and two constants. Note that if ǫ is small enough, we can suppose that 22 ≤ t 0 < t 1 . We can then introduce two constants δ > 0 and K > 0 independent of ǫ and satisfying We also consider, for Q > 0, the following subsets of [t 0 , t 1 ], Then, using (41) and sup [t0,t1] |V | ≤ 2, we have for all t ∈ [t 0 , t 1 ], The result would ensue if we could bound the three integrals on the right hand side of the last inequality by C √ ǫ, with C > 0 a constant independant of T and (x, v). Indeed, we would then obtain, for ǫ < (2C) −2 , which would contradict |V (t 1 )| = 1. We can easily bound two of these integrals, using either the strong decay rate of F away from the light cone or the strong decay rate satisfied by the null component ρ and that |X(s)| s is bounded near the light cone. More precisely, using (39), the definition of A δ and t 0 ≥ 1, one have For the last integral, observe, in view of (39), that As |s − |X(s)|| is small on A δ , the goal is to obtain enough decay from V (s) |V (s)| − X(s) s . The rough idea behind the following computations is the following. As |s − X(s)| is small, then, by (40), s ∼ |X(s)| ∼ s 0 V (τ ) |V (τ )| dτ and we almost have equality in the triangular inequality V |V | then almost keep a constant direction u, so that In order to bound (43), let us introduce, for Q > 0 and δ 0 > 0, the following subsets of [t 0 , t 1 ], In view of the definition of C δ 4K and (43), I 1 √ ǫ would ensue if we prove From now, we suppose that C δ 4K = ∅ as otherwise, I = 0. We start by the following two results.
Proof. Let t ∈ [s, min(t 1 , s + s By the mean value theorem applied to the function V |V | and using the estimate (39), we have Using |X(s)| ≤ s + δs Thus, as s ≤ t ≤ s + s 3 4 and 2K ≥ 2 + 2δ (see (42)), it comes, for ǫ small enough, Lemma A.3. Suppose that s ∈ C δ 4K and let t * (s) be equal to inf{t ∈ [s, t 1 ] / t / ∈ C 2δ 2K } if it is well defined and t * (s) = t 1 otherwise. Then, We are now able to bound I. Let D := {i ∈ N / C i 4K = ∅}. Suppose first that t ≥ |X(t)| for all t ∈ C δ 4K . Then, using (39), Lemma A.3 and Corollary A.4, Otherwise, with p = min D and according to Corollary A.4, we have t ≥ |X(t)| for all t ≥ 2 p+2 and the result then follows from √ ǫ In order to apply this result in Subsection 7.1, we need to adapt it to an echeloned system of transport equations.
We denote by (X s , V s ) the value in s of the characteristic of the operator T χ F which was equal to (x, v) in s = t. By Duhamel's formula, we have According to the proof of Proposition A.1, since otherwise we would have |V t | = |v| ≥ 1. Fix now s ∈ [0, t] and consider w ∈ R 3 such that |w| < 1 2 |v|. We denote by (X w,s τ , V w,s τ ) the value in τ of the characteristic of T χ F which was equal to (X s , V s + w) in τ = s. Then, g 1 (s, X s , V s + w) = g 1 (0, X w,s 0 , V w,s 0 ).

B Bounding the initial norms
We consider in this section (f 0 , F 0 ) satisfying the hypotheses of Theorem 1.1 and (f, F ) the unique classical solution of (1)-(3) arising from these data.
• If q + |κ| ≤ N , then, using a standard L ∞ − L 2 Sobolev inequality on τ q+|κ|+1 + ∇ q ∂t ∇ κ x F and that |v| ≥ 3 on the support of f 0 , we get The L 1 v L 1 (Σ 0 ) norm of the left hand side of the previous inequality is then bounded by ǫ 3 2 according to the induction hypothesis and p + q = r.
• Otherwise |β 1 | + p ≤ 2 and, by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in x, The left hand side of the previous inequality can be bounded by ǫ 3 2 . Indeed, as |v| ≥ 3 on the support of f 0 and using a L 2 x − L 1 x Sobolev inequality 16 , it comes .
It remains to use the induction hypothesis twice. This concludes the induction and then the proof.

C All derivatives of F are chargeless
The aim of this section is to prove the following result, which also applies to massive particles.
• If Z = ∂ i is a spatial translation, an integration by parts on the right hand side of (53) gives the result.
• If Z = ∂ t , then, as ∂ t g = − v j v 0 ∂ j g + H v v 0 , ∇ v h , integrations by parts (in x and in v) gives us, as H is a 2-form, (54) • If Z = Ω 0i is a Lorentz boost, then an integration by parts in x on t∂ i g and in v on v 0 ∂ v i g gives Using again ∂ t g = − v j v 0 ∂ j g + H v v 0 , ∇ v h and integrating by parts, we have As H is a 2-form, we finally obtain that Q(t) = 0.
For the case of the scaling vector field, note first by Lemma 2.8 that ∇ µ L S (G) µ0 = J(Sg) 0 + 3J(g) 0 . Hence, Recall from (54) that the integral on the right hand side of the last equation is equal to 0. This concludes the proof.
For the results concerning the operator ∇ ∂t , use ∇ ∂t L = ∇ ∂t L = ∇ ∂t e A = 0. Finally, for ∇ L and ∇ L , recall that L = ∂ t + ∂ r and L = ∂ t − ∂ r .