Probab. Theory Relat. Fields (2010) 146:189–222 DOI 10.1007/s00440-008-0188-0 Macroscopic limits for stochastic partial differential equations of McKean–Vlasov type Peter M. Kotelenez · Thomas G. Kurtz Received: 23 August 2006 / Revised: 22 October 2008 / Published online: 12 December 2008 © Springer-Verlag 2008 Abstract A class of quasilinear stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs), driven by spatially correlated Brownian noise, is shown to become macroscopic (i.e., deterministic), as the length of the correlations tends to 0. The limit is the solution of a quasilinear partial differential equation. The quasilinear SPDEs are obtained as a continuum limit from the empirical distribution of a large number of stochastic ordinary differential equations (SODEs), coupled though a mean-field interaction and driven by correlated Brownian noise. The limit theorems are obtained by application of a general result on the convergence of exchangeable systems of processes. We also compare our approach to SODEs with the one introduced by Kunita. Keywords Stochastic partial differential equations · Partial differential equations · Macroscopic limit · Particle systems · Stochastic ordinary differential equations · Exchangeable sequences Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 60H15 · 60F17 · 60J60 · 60G09 · 60K40 This research was partially supported by NSF grant DMS 05-03983. P. M. Kotelenez (B) Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA e-mail:
[email protected] T. G. Kurtz Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin, 480 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI 53706-1388, USA e-mail:
[email protected] 123 190 P. M. Kotelenez, T. G. Kurtz 1 Introduction Let N point particles be distributed over Rd , d ∈ N.