We study the macroscopic transport properties of the quantum Lorentz gas in a crystal with short-range potentials, and show that in the Boltzmann-Grad limit the quantum dynamics converges to a random flight process which is not compatible with the linear Boltzmann equation. Our derivation relies on a hypothesis concerning the statistical distribution of lattice points in thin domains, which is closely related to the Berry-Tabor conjecture in quantum chaos.
Despite the progress achieved by kinetic theory, the search of possible exact kinetic equations remains elusive to date. This concerns, specifically, the issue of the validity of the conjecture proposed by Grad (Grad, 1972) and developed in a seminal work by Lanford (Lanford, 1974) that kinetic equations - such as the Boltzmann equation for a gas of classical hard spheres - might result exact in an appropriate asymptotic limit, usually denoted as Boltzmann-Grad limit. The Lanford conjecture has actually had a profound influence on the scientific community, giving rise to a whole line of origin…
Despite the progress achieved by kinetic theory, its rigorous theoretical foundations still remain unsolved to date. This concerns in particular the search of possible exact kinetic equations and, specifically, the conjecture proposed by Grad (Grad, 1972) and developed in a seminal work by Lanford (Lanford, 1974) that kinetic equations - such as the Boltzmann equation for a gas of classical hard spheres - might result exact in an appropriate asymptotic limit, usually denoted as Boltzmann-Grad limit. The Lanford conjecture has actually had a profound influence on the scientific community, givin…
We study the dynamics of a point particle in a periodic array of spherical scatterers, and construct a stochastic process that governs the time evolution for random initial data in the limit of low scatterer density (Boltzmann-Grad limit). A generic path of the limiting process is a piecewise linear curve whose consecutive segments are generated by a Markov process with memory two.
In this paper the problem is posed of the prescription of the so-called Boltzmann-Grad (BG) limit ($\mathcal{L}_{BG}$) for the $N-$body system of smooth hard-spheres which undergo unary, binary as well as multiple elastic instantaneous collisions. The statistical description is couched in terms of the Master kinetic equation, i.e., the kinetic equation which realizes the axiomatic "\textit{ab initio}" approach to the classical statistical mechanics of finite hard-sphere systems recently developed (Tessarotto \textit{et al.}, 2013-2017). The issue addressed here concerns the prescription of the…
We review various contributions on the fundamental work of Lanford deriving the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics in the low density limit. We focus especially on the assumptions made on the initial data and on how they encode irreversibility. The impossibility to reverse time in the Boltzmann equation (expressed for instance by Boltzmann's H-theorem) is related to the lack of convergence of higher order marginals on some singular sets. Explicit counterexamples single out the microscopic sets where the initial data should converge in order to produce the Boltzmann dynamics.
We study a system of charged, noninteracting classical particles moving in a Poisson distribution of hard-disk scatterers in two dimensions, under the effect of a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane. We prove that, in the low-density (Boltzmann-Grad) limit, the particle distribution evolves according to a generalized linear Boltzmann equation, previously derived and solved by Bobylev et al. [4, 5, 6]. In this model, Boltzmann's chaos fails, and the kinetic equation includes non-Markovian terms. The ideas of [13] can be however adapted to prove convergence of the process with memory.
One of the central challenges in kinetic theory is the derivation of macroscopic evolution equations--describing, for example, the dynamics of an electron gas--from the underlying fundamental microscopic laws of classical or quantum mechanics. An iconic mathematical model in this research area is the Lorentz gas, which describes an ensemble of non-interacting point particles in an infinite array of spherical scatterers. In the case of a disordered scatterer configuration, the classical results by Gallavotti, Spohn and Boldrighini-Bunimovich-Sinai show that the time evolution of a macroscopic p…
The article discusses some of the latest advances in the mathematical understanding of the nature of kinetic equations that describe the collective behavior of many-particle systems with collisional dynamics.
In earlier work we showed that the particle displacement for the multidimensional periodic Lorentz gas, in the limit of low scatterer density (Boltzmann-Grad limit), satisfies a central limit theorem with superdiffusive scaling. The present paper extends this result to a functional central limit theorem, i.e., the weak convergence of the particle trajectory to Brownian motion.
We introduce a numerical method for solving Grad's moment equations or regularized moment equations for arbitrary order of moments. In our algorithm, we do not need explicitly the moment equations. As an instead, we directly start from the Boltzmann equation and perform Grad's moment method \cite{Grad} and the regularization technique \cite{Struchtrup2003} numerically. We define a conservative projection operator and propose a fast implementation which makes it convenient to add up two distributions and provides more efficient flux calculations compared with the classic method using explicit e…
The dynamics of a point particle in a periodic array of spherical scatterers converges, in the limit of small scatterer size, to a random flight process, whose paths are piecewise linear curves generated by a Markov process with memory two. The corresponding transport equation is distinctly different from the linear Boltzmann equation observed in the case of a random configuration of scatterers. In the present paper we provide asymptotic estimates for the transition probabilities of this Markov process. Our results in particular sharpen previous upper and lower bounds on the distribution of fr…
The periodic Lorentz gas is the dynamical system corresponding to the free motion of a point particle in a periodic system of fixed spherical obstacles of radius $r$ centered at the integer points, assuming all collisions of the particle with the obstacles to be elastic. In this Note, we study this motion on time intervals of order $1/r$ and in the limit as $r\to 0^+$, in the case of two space dimensions.
In this paper we present a rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation in a compact domain with diffuse reflection boundary conditions. We consider a system of $N$ hard spheres of diameter $ε$ in a box $Λ:= [0, 1] \times (R/Z)^2$. When a particle meets the boundary of the domain, it is instantaneously reinjected into the box with a random direction, and conserving kinetic energy. We prove that the first marginal of the process converges in the scaling $Nε^2 = 1$, $ε\rightarrow 0$ to the solution of the Boltzmann equation, with the same short time restriction of Lanford's classical theorem.
We study the evolution of a quantum particle interacting with a random potential in the low density limit (Boltzmann-Grad). The phase space density of the quantum evolution defined through the Husimi function converges weakly to a linear Boltzmann equation with collision kernel given by the full quantum scattering cross section.
A linear Boltzmann equation is derived in the Boltzmann-Grad scaling for the deterministic dynamics of many interacting particles with random initial data. We study a Rayleigh gas where a tagged particle is undergoing hard-sphere collisions with background particles, which do not interact among each other. In the Boltzmann-Grad scaling, we derive the validity of a linear Boltzmann equation for arbitrary long times under moderate assumptions on higher moments of the initial distributions of the tagged particle and the possibly non-equilibrium distribution of the background. The convergence of t…
In this paper, we derive the quantum hydrodynamics models based on the moment closure of the Wigner equation. The moment expansion adopted is of the Grad type firstly proposed in \cite{Grad}. The Grad's moment method was originally developed for the Boltzmann equation. In \cite{Fan_new}, a regularization method for the Grad's moment system of the Boltzmann equation was proposed to achieve the globally hyperbolicity so that the local well-posedness of the moment system is attained. With the moment expansion of the Wigner function, the drift term in the Wigner equation has exactly the same momen…
We prove the invariance principle for a \emph{random Lorentz-gas} particle in 3 dimensions under the Boltzmann-Grad limit and simultaneous diffusive scaling. That is, for the trajectory of a point-like particle moving among infinite-mass, hard-core, spherical scatterers of radius $r$, placed according to a Poisson point process of density $\varrho$, in the limit $\varrho\to\infty$, $r\to0$, $\varrho r^{2}\to1$ up to time scales of order $T=o(r^{-2}{|\log r|}^{-2})$. To our knowledge this represents the first significant progress towards solving rigorously this problem in classical nonequilibri…
For low density gases the validity of the Boltzmann transport equation is well established. The central object is the one-particle distribution function, $f$, which in the Boltzmann-Grad limit satisfies the Boltzmann equation. Grad and, much refined, Cercignani argue for the existence of this limit on the basis of the BBGKY hierarchy for hard spheres. At least for a short kinetic time span, the argument can be made mathematically precise following the seminal work of Lanford. In this article a corresponding programme is undertaken for weakly nonlinear, both discrete and continuum, wave equatio…
We present a quantitative analysis of the Boltzmann-Grad (low-density) limit of a hard sphere system. We introduce and study a set of functions (correlation errors) measuring the deviations in time from the statistical independence of particles (propagation of chaos). In the context of the BBGKY hierarchy, a correlation error of order $k$ measures the event where $k$ particles are connected by a chain of interactions preventing the factorization. We show that, provided $k < \varepsilon^{-α}$, such an error flows to zero with the average density $\varepsilon$, for short times, as $\varepsilon^{…
In the paper the possible approaches to the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann kinetic equation with hard sphere collisions from underlying dynamics are considered. In particular, a formalism for the description of the evolution of infinitely many hard spheres within the framework of marginal observables in the Boltzmann--Grad scaling limit is developed. Also we give consideration to one more approach of the description of the kinetic evolution of hard spheres in terms of a one-particle distribution function governed by the non-Markovian generalization of the Enskog equation and the Boltzman…
The two-dimensional, periodic Lorentz gas, is the dynamical system corresponding with the free motion of a point particle in a planar system of fixed circular obstacles centered at the vertices of a square lattice in the Euclidian plane. Assuming elastic collisions between the particle and the obstacles, this dynamical system is studied in the Boltzmann-Grad limit, assuming that the obstacle radius $r$ and the reciprocal mean free path are asymptotically equivalent small quantities, and that the particle's distribution function is slowly varying in the space variable. In this limit, the period…
We show that the time evolution of a quantum wavepacket in a periodic potential converges in a combined high-frequency/Boltzmann-Grad limit, up to second order in the coupling constant, to terms that are compatible with the linear Boltzmann equation. This complements results of Eng and Erdös for low-density random potentials, where convergence to the linear Boltzmann equation is proved in all orders. We conjecture, however, that the linear Boltzmann equation fails in the periodic setting for terms of order four and higher. Our proof uses Floquet-Bloch theory, multi-variable theta series and eq…
The linear Boltzmann equation describes the macroscopic transport of a gas of non-interacting point particles in low-density matter. It has wide-ranging applications, including neutron transport, radiative transfer, semiconductors and ocean wave scattering. Recent research shows that the equation fails in highly-correlated media, where the distribution of free path lengths is non-exponential. We investigate this phenomenon in the case of polycrystals whose typical grain size is comparable to the mean free path length. Our principal result is a new generalized linear Boltzmann equation that cap…
The time evolution governed by the Boltzmann kinetic equation is compatible with mechanics and thermodynamics. The former compatibility is mathematically expressed in the Hamiltonian and Godunov structures, the latter in the structure of gradient dynamics guaranteeing the growth of entropy and consequently the approach to equilibrium. We carry all three structures to the Grad reformulation of the Boltzmann equation (to the Grad hierarchy). First, we recognize the structures in the infinite Grad hierarchy and then in several examples of finite hierarchies representing extended hydrodynamic equa…
In the current work we construct a multimolecule random process which leads to the Boltzmann equation in the appropriate limit, and which is different from the deterministic real gas dynamics process. We approximate the statistical difference between the two processes via a suitable diffusion process, which is obtained in the multiscale homogenization limit. The resulting Boltzmann equation acquires a new spatially diffusive term, which subsequently manifests in the corresponding fluid dynamics equations. We test the Navier-Stokes and Grad closures of the diffusive fluid dynamics equations in …
We consider a classical system of point particles interacting by means of a short range potential. We prove that, in the low--density (Boltzmann--Grad) limit, the system behaves, for short times, as predicted by the associated Boltzmann equation. This is a revisitation and an extension of the thesis of King (unpublished), appeared after the well known result of Lanford for hard spheres, and of a recent paper by Gallagher et al (arXiv: 1208.5753v1). Our analysis applies to any stable and smooth potential. In the case of repulsive potentials (with no attractive parts), we estimate explicitly the…
The present paper proves that all limit points of sequences of renormalized solutions of the Boltzmann equation in the limit of small, asymptotically equivalent Mach and Knudsen numbers are governed by Leray solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. This convergence result holds for hard cutoff potentials in the sense of H. Grad, and therefore completes earlier results by the same authors [Invent. Math. 155, 81-161(2004)] for Maxwell molecules.
A rigorous derivation of point vortex systems from kinetic equations has been a challenging open problem, due to singular layers in the inviscid limit, giving a large velocity gradient in the Boltzmann equations. In this paper, we derive the Helmholtz-Kirchhoff point-vortex system from the hydrodynamic limits of the Boltzmann equations. We construct Boltzmann solutions by the Hilbert-type expansion associated to the point vortices solutions of the 2D Navier-Stokes equations. We give a precise pointwise estimate for the solution of the Boltzmann equations with small Strouhal number and Knudsen …
