The Boltzmann equation is a nonlinear partial differential equation that plays a central role in statistical mechanics. From the mathematical point of view, the existence of global smooth solutions for arbitrary initial data is an outstanding open problem. In the present article, we review a program focused on the type of particle interactions known as non-cutoff. It is dedicated to the derivation of a priori estimates in $C^\infty$, depending only on physically meaningful conditions. We prove that the solution will stay uniformly smooth provided that its mass, energy and entropy densities remain bounded, and away from vacuum.
We prove that Gevrey regularity is propagated by the Boltzmann equation with Maxwellian molecules, with or without angular cut-off. The proof relies on the Wild expansion of the solution to the equation and on the characterization of Gevrey regularity by the Fourier transform.
In the present work, we adopt the idea of velocity averaging lemma to establish regularity for stationary linearized Boltzmann equations in a bounded convex domain. Considering the incoming data, with three iterations, we establish regularity in fractional Sobolev space in space variable up to order $1^-$.
This article proves the regularity for the Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff with hard potential. By sharpening the coercivity and upper bound estimate on the collision operator, analyzing the Poisson bracket between the transport operator and some weighted pseudo-differential operator, we prove the regularizing effect in space and velocity variables when the initial data has mild regularity.
We derive $C^\infty$ a priori estimates for solutions of the inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation without cut-off, conditional to point-wise bounds on their mass, energy and entropy densities. We also establish decay estimates for large velocities, for all derivatives of the solution.
The regularity of solutions to the Boltzmann equation is a fundamental problem in the kinetic theory. In this paper, the case with angular cut-off is investigated. It is shown that the macroscopic parts of solutions to the Boltzmann equation, i.e. the density, momentum and total energy are continuous functions of $(x,t)$ in the region $\mathbb{R}^3\times(0,+\infty)$. More precisely, these macroscopic quantities immediately become continuous in any positive time even though they are initially discontinuous and the discontinuities of solutions propagate only in the microscopic level. It should b…
We consider the regularity of stationary solutions to the linearized Boltzmann equations in bounded $C^1$ convex domains in $\mathbb{R}^3$ for gases with cutoff hard potential and cutoff Maxwellian gases. We prove that the stationary solutions solutions are Hölder continuous with order $\frac1{2}^-$ away from the boundary provided the incoming data have the same regularity. The key idea is to partially transfer the regularity in velocity obtained by collision to space through transport and collision.
Regularity and singularity of the solutions according to the shape of domains is a challenging research theme in the Boltzmann theory (\cite{Kim11,GKTT1}). In this paper, we prove an Hölder regularity in $C^{0,\frac{1}{2}-}_{x,v}$ for the Boltzmann equation of the hard-sphere molecule, which undergoes the elastic reflection in the intermolecular collision and the contact with the boundary of a convex obstacle. In particular, this Hölder regularity result is a stark contrast to the case of other physical boundary conditions (such as the diffuse reflection boundary condition and in-flow boundary…
We develop the regularity theory of the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation with cut-off and hard potentials (for instance, hard spheres), by (i) revisiting the Lp-theory to obtain constructive bounds, (ii) establishing propagation of smoothness and singularities, (iii) obtaining estimates about the decay of the sin- gularities of the initial datum. Our proofs are based on a detailed study of the "regularity of the gain operator". An application to the long-time behavior is presented.
In this paper we consider the non-cutoff Boltzmann equation in spatially inhomogeneous case. We prove the propagation of Gevrey regularity for the so-called smooth Maxwellian decay solutions to the Cauchy problem of spatially inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation, and obtain Gevrey regularity of order $1/(2s)$ in the velocity variable $v$ and order 1 in the space variable $x$. The strategy relies on our recent results for spatially homogeneous case (J. Diff. Equ. 253(4) (2012), 1172-1190. DOI: 10.1016/j.jde.2012.04.023). Rather, we need much more intricate analysis additionally in order to handle w…
In this paper we study the regularity of the non-cutoff Vlasov-Poisson-Boltzmann system for plasma particles of two species in the whole space $\mathbb{R}^3$ with hard potential. The existence of global-in-time nearby Maxwellian solutions is known for soft potential from [15]. However the smoothing effect of these solutions has been a challenging open problem. We establish the global existence and regularizing effect to the Cauchy problem for hard potential with large time decay. Hence, the solutions are smooth with respect to $(t,x,v)$ for any positive time $t>0$. This gives the regularity to…
We investigate the regularity issue for the diffuse reflection boundary problem to the stationary linearized Boltzmann equation for hard sphere potential, cutoff hard potential, or cutoff Maxwellian molecular gases in a strictly convex bounded domain. We obtain pointwise estimates for first derivatives of the solution provided the boundary temperature is bounded differentiable and the solution is bounded. This result can be understood as a stationary version of the velocity averaging lemma and mixture lemma.
In this paper, we study the Gevrey regularity of spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff. We prove the propagation of Gevrey regularity for $C^\infty$ solutions with the Maxwellian decay to the Cauchy problem of spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation. The idea we use here is based on the framework of Morimoto's recent paper (See Morimoto: J. Pseudo-Differ. Oper. Appl. (2010) 1: 139-159, DOI:10.1007/s11868-010-0008-z), but we extend the range of the index $γ$ satisfying $γ+ 2s \in (-1,1)$, $s\in (0,1/2)$ and in this case we consider the kinetic factor in the form of $Φ…
The Boltzmann equation is a fundamental kinetic equation that describes the dynamics of dilute gas. In this paper we study the regularity of both dynamical and steady Boltzmann equation in strictly convex domain with the Cercignani-Lampis (C-L) boundary condition. The C-L boundary condition describes the intermediate reflection law between diffuse reflection and specular reflection via two accommodation coefficients. We construct local weighted $C^1$ dynamical solution using repeated interaction through the characteristic. When we assume small fluctuation to the wall temperature and accommodat…
We consider the Boltzmann equation with external fields in strictly convex domains with diffuse reflection boundary condition. As long as the normal derivative of external fields satisfy some sign condition on the boundary (1.8) we construct classical $C^1$ solutions away from the grazing set. As a consequence we construct solutions of Vlasov-Poisson-Boltzmann system having bounded derivatives away from the grazing set (weighted $W^{1,\infty}$ estimate). In particular this improves the recent regularity estimate of such system in weighted $W^{1,p}$ space for $p<6$ in [1].
Consider the Boltzmann equation in a general non-convex domain with the diffuse boundary condition. We establish optimal BV estimates for such solutions. Our method consists of a new $W^{1,1}-$trace estimate for the diffuse boundary condition and a delicate construction of and an $\varepsilon-$tubular neighborhood of the singular set.
In this work, we study the Cauchy problem for the radially symmetric spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation with Debye-Yukawa potential. We prove that this Cauchy problem enjoys the same smoothing effect as the Cauchy problem defined by the evolution equation associated to a fractional logarithmic harmonic oscillator. To be specific, we can prove the solution of the Cauchy problem belongs to Shubin spaces.
We study the uniqueness and regularity of the steady states of the diffusively driven Boltzmann equation in the physically relevant case where the restitution coefficient depends on the impact velocity including, in particular, the case of viscoelastic hard-spheres. We adopt a strategy which is novel in several aspects, in particular, the study of regularity does not requires a priori knowledge of the time-dependent problem. Furthermore, the uniqueness result is obtained in the small thermalization regime by studying the so-called quasi-elastic limit for the problem. An important new aspect li…
In this work, we study the Cauchy problem for the spatially homogeneous non-cutoff Boltzamnn equation with Maxwellian molecules. We prove that this Cauchy problem enjoys Gelfand-Shilov regularizing effect, that means the smoothing properties is same as the Cauchy problem defined by the evolution equation associated to a fractional harmonic oscillator. The power of this fractional is exactly the singular index of non-cutoff collisional kernel of Boltzmann operator. So that we get the regularity of solution in the Gevery class with the sharp power and the optimal exponential decay of solutions. …
We investigate the long time behavior of a system of viscoelastic particles modeled with the homogeneous Boltzmann equation. We prove the existence of a universal Maxwellian intermediate asymptotic state and explicit the rate of convergence towards it. Exponential lower pointwise bounds and propagation of regularity are also studied. These results can be seen as the generalization of several classical facts holding for the pseudo-Maxwellian and constant normal restitution models.
In this paper, we study the Cauchy problem for the linear spatially homogeneous Boltzamnn equation with Debye-Yukawa potential. Using the spectral decomposition of the linear operator, we prove that, for an initial datum in the sense of distribution which contains the dual of the Sobolev spaces, there exists a unique solution which belongs to a more regular Sobolev space for any positive time. We also study the sharp regularity of the solution.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new characterization of the characteristic functions for the study on the measure valued solution to the homogeneous Boltzmann equation so that it precisely captures the moment constraint in physics. This significantly improves the previous result by Cannone-Karch [CPAM 63(2010), 747-778] in the sense that the new characterization gives a complete description of infinite energy solutions for the Maxwellian cross section. In addition, the global in time smoothing effect of the infinite energy solution except for a single Dirac mass initial datum is ju…
A basic question about regularity of Boltzmann solutions in the presence of physical boundary conditions has been open due to characteristic nature of the boundary as well as the non-local mixing of the collision operator. Consider the Boltzmann equation in a strictly convex domain with the specular, bounce-back and diffuse boundary condition. With the aid of a distance function toward the grazing set, we construct weighted classical $C^{1}$ solutions away from the grazing set for all boundary conditions. For the diffuse boundary condition, we construct $W^{1,p}$ solutions for $1< p<2$ and wei…
We prove the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions around an equilibrium to the Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff in some Sobolev spaces. In addition, the solutions thus obtained are shown to be non-negative and $C^\infty$ in all variables for any positive time. In this paper, we study the Maxwellian molecule type collision operator with mild singularity. One of the key observations is the introduction of a new important norm related to the singular behavior of the cross section in the collision operator. This norm captures the essential properties of the singularity a…
The Boltzmann equation without Grad's angular cutoff assumption is believed to have regularizing effect on the solution because of the non-integrable angular singularity of the cross-section. However, even though so far this has been justified satisfactorily for the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation, it is still basically unsolved for the spatially inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation. In this paper, by sharpening the coercivity and upper bound estimates for the collision operator, establishing the hypo-ellipticity of the Boltzmann operator based on a generalized version of the uncertainty …
In the paper, for the Cauchy problem on the non-cutoff Boltzmann equation in torus, we establish the global-in-time Gevrey smoothness in velocity and space variables for a class of low-regularity mild solutions near Maxwellians with the Gevrey index depending only on the angular singularity. This together with [24] provides a self-contained well-posedness theory for both existence and regularity of global solutions for initial data of low regularity in the framework of perturbations. For the proof we treat in a subtle way the commutator between the regularization operators and the Boltzmann co…
Higher regularity estimate has been a challenging question for the Boltzmann equation in bounded domains. Indeed, it is well-known to have "the non-existence of a second order derivative at the boundary" in [15] even for symmetric convex domains such as a disk or sphere. In this paper we answer this question in the affirmative by constructing the $C^{1,β}$ solutions away from the grazing boundary, for any $β<1$, to the stationary Boltzmann equation with the non-isothermal diffuse boundary condition in strictly convex domains, as long as a smooth wall temperature has small fluctuation pointwise…
In the study of solutions to the relativistic Boltzmann equation, their regularity with respect to the momentum variables has been an outstanding question, even local in time, due to the initially unexpected growth in the post-collisional momentum variables which was discovered in 1991 by Glassey & Strauss \cite{MR1105532}. We establish momentum regularity within energy spaces via a new splitting technique and interplay between the Glassey-Strauss frame and the center of mass frame of the relativistic collision operator. In a periodic box, these new momentum regularity estimates lead to a proo…
Since the work [13] by Guo [Invent. Math. 153 (2003), no. 3, 593--630], how to establish the global existence of perturbative classical solutions around a global Maxwellian to the Vlasov-Maxwell-Boltzmann system with the whole range of soft potentials has been an open problem. This is mainly due to the complex structure of the system, in particular, the degenerate dissipation at large velocity, the velocity-growth of the nonlinear term induced by the Lorentz force, and the regularity-loss of the electromagnetic fields. This paper aims to resolve this problem in the whole space provided that in…
We study a regularity property for the gain part of the relativistic Boltzmann collision operator. Our assumptions on the collisional scattering kernel cover the full range of generic hard and soft potentials with angular cut-off.
In this paper, we study the generalized polynomial chaos (gPC) based stochastic Galerkin method for the linear semiconductor Boltzmann equation under diffusive scaling and with random inputs from an anisotropic collision kernel and the random initial condition. While the numerical scheme and the proof of uniform-in-Knudsen-number regularity of the distribution function in the random space has been introduced in [Jin-Liu-16'], the main goal of this paper is to first obtain a sharper estimate on the regularity of the solution-an exponential decay towards its local equilibrium, which then lead to…
In this paper, we consider the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff. We prove that every $L^1$ weak solution to the Cauchy problem with finite moments of all order acquires the $C^\infty$ regularity in the velocity variable for the positive time.
We survey some new results regarding a priori regularity estimates for the Boltzmann and Landau equations conditional to the boundedness of the associated macroscopic quantities. We also discuss some open problems in the area. In particular, we describe some ideas related to the global well posedness problem for the space-homogeneous Landau equation for Coulomb potentials.
In this paper we study the Gevrey regularity for the weak solutions to the Cauchy problem of the non-cutoff spatially homogeneous Botlzmann equation for the Maxwellian molecules model with the singularity exponent $s\in (0,1)$. We establish that any weak solution belongs to the Gevrey spaces for any positive time.
We apply recent results on regularity for general integro-differential equations to derive a priori estimates in Hölder spaces for the space homogeneous Boltzmann equation in the non cut-off case. We also show an a priori estimate in $L^\infty$ which applies in the space inhomogeneous case as well, provided that the macroscopic quantities remain bounded.
It is known that in the parameters range $-2 \leq γ<-2s$ spectral gap does not exist for the linearized Boltzmann operator without cutoff but it does for the linearized Landau operator. This paper is devoted to the understanding of the formation of spectral gap in this range through the grazing limit. Precisely, we study the Cauchy problems of these two classical collisional kinetic equations around global Maxwellians in torus and establish the following results that are uniform in the vanishing grazing parameter $ε$: (i) spectral gap type estimates for the collision operators; (ii) global exi…
We consider the Cauchy problem for the spatially inhomogeneous non-cutoff Boltzmann equation with polynomially decaying initial data in the velocity variable. We establish short-time existence for any initial data with this decay in a fifth order Sobolev space by working in a mixed $L^2$ and $L^\infty$ space that allows to compensate for potential moment generation and obtaining new estimates on the collision operator that are well-adapted to this space. Our results improve the range of parameters for which the Boltzmann equation is well-posed in this decay regime, as well as relax the restric…
The unique global strong solution in the Chemin-Lerner type space to the Cauchy problem on the Boltzmann equation for hard potentials is constructed in perturbation framework. Such solution space is of critical regularity with respect to spatial variable, and it can capture the intrinsic property of the Botlzmann equation. For the proof of global well-posedness, we develop some new estimates on the nonlinear collision term through the Littlewood-Paley theory.
A general fourth-order mesoscopic multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann model and equivalent macroscopic finite-difference scheme for two-dimensional diffusion equations
We prove uniqueness of self-similar profiles for the one-dimensional inelastic Boltzmann equation with moderately hard potentials, that is with collision kernel of the form | $\bullet$ | $γ$ for $γ$ > 0 small enough (explicitly quantified). Our result provides the first uniqueness statement for self-similar profiles of inelastic Boltzmann models allowing for strong inelasticity besides the explicitly solvable case of Maxwell interactions (corresponding to $γ$ = 0). Our approach relies on a perturbation argument from the corresponding Maxwell model through a careful study of the associated line…
In this paper, we prove some a priori stability estimates (in weighted Sobolev spaces) for the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff (covering every physical collision kernels). These estimates are conditioned to some regularity estimates on the solutions, and therefore reduce the stability and uniqueness issue to the one of proving suitable regularity bounds on the solutions. We then prove such regularity bounds for a class of interactions including the so-called (non cutoff and non mollified) hard potentials and moderately soft potentials. In particular, we obtain t…
