Mean field limits for nonlinear spatially extended Hawkes processes with exponential memory kernels

We consider spatially extended systems of interacting nonlinear Hawkes processes modeling large systems of neurons placed in ℝ^d and study the associated mean field limits. As the total number of neurons tends to infinity, we prove that the evolution of a typical neuron, attached to a given spatial position, can be described by a nonlinear limit differential equation driven by a Poisson random measure. The limit process is described by a neural field equation. As a consequence, we provide a rigorous derivation of the neural field equation based on a thorough mean field analysis.