Commuting velocity derivative for kinetic transport ($Z_j={\partial }_{v_j}+t{\sum }_i({\partial }_{v_j}{a}_i){\partial }_{x_i}$)

The differential operators $Z_j$ commute with $D={\partial }_t+a(v)\cdot {\nabla }_x$. Indeed $[D,{\partial }_{v_j}]=-{\sum }_i({\partial }_{v_j}{a}_i){\partial }_{x_i}$, canceled by differentiating the explicit time factor in $Z_j$. Hence $Z_{j}f$ satisfies the same transport equation as $f$, and obeys the same L2 norm conservation when boundary fluxes vanish. For the standard Jacobian matrix $(Da{)}_{ij}={\partial }_{v_j}{a}_i$, the vector of these derivatives is ${\nabla }_{v}f+t(Da{)}^T{\nabla }_{x}f$.