Note that
. The relativistic Boltzmann equation models the spacetime
behaviour of the one-particle distribution function
f
=
f
(t,
x,
p), and it has the form
where the relativistic collision operator Q (f, g) is defined by
(Note that
g
=
f
in (2)). Here
is the element of surface area on
and
is the scattering kernel, which depends on the scattering
cross-section in the interaction process. See [23
] for a discussion about the scattering kernel. The function
results from the collision mechanics. If two particles, with
momentum
p
and
q
respectively, collide elastically (no energy loss) with
scattering angle
, their momenta will change,
and
. The relation between
p,
q
and
p
',
q
' is
where
This relation is a consequence of four-momentum conservation,
or equivalently
These are the conservation equations for relativistic particle dynamics. In the classical case these equations read
The function
is the distance between
p
and
p
' (q
and
q
'), and the analogue function in the Newtonian case has the
form
By inserting
in place of
a
in (2
) we obtain the classical Boltzmann collision operator
(disregarding the scattering kernel, which is also
different).
The main result concerning the existence of solutions to the
classical Boltzmann equation is a theorem by DiPerna and
Lions [25] that proves existence, but not uniqueness, of renormalized
solutions (i.e. solutions in a weak sense, which are even more
general than distributional solutions). An analogous result holds
in the relativistic case, as was shown by Dudynsky and
Ekiel-Jezewska [26]. Regarding classical solutions, Illner and Shinbrot [46] have shown global existence of solutions to the nonrelativistic
Boltzmann equation for small initial data (close to vacuum). At
present there is no analogous result for the relativistic
Boltzmann equation and this must be regarded as an interesting
open problem. When the data are close to equilibrium (see below),
global existence of classical solutions has been proved by
Glassey and Strauss [36] in the relativistic case and by Ukai [87] in the nonrelativistic case (see also [84]).
The collision operator Q (f, g) may be written in an obvious way as
where
and
are called the gain and loss term respectively. In [2
] it is proved that given
and
with
, then
under some technical requirements on the scattering kernel.
Here
is the usual Sobolev space. This regularizing result was first
proved by P.L. Lions [49] in the classical situation. The proof relies on the theory of
Fourier integral operators and on the method of stationary phase,
and requires a careful analysis of the collision geometry, which
is very different in the relativistic case.
The regularizing theorem has many applications. An important
application is to prove that solutions tend to equilibrium for
large times. More precisely, Lions used the regularizing theorem
to prove that solutions to the (classical) Boltzmann equation,
with periodic boundary conditions, converge in
to a global Maxwellian,
as time goes to infinity. This result had first been obtained by Arkeryd [8] by using non-standard analysis. It should be pointed out that the convergence takes place through a sequence of times tending to infinity and it is not known whether the limit is unique or depends on the sequence. In the relativistic situation, the analogous question of convergence to a relativistic Maxwellian, or a Jüttner equilibrium solution,
had been studied by Glassey and Strauss [36, 37]. In the periodic case they proved convergence in a variety of function spaces for initial data close to a Jüttner solution. Having obtained the regularizing theorem for the relativistic gain term, it is a straightforward task to follow the method of Lions and prove convergence to a local Jüttner solution for arbitrary data (satisfying the natural bounds of finite energy and entropy) that is periodic in the space variables. In [2] it is next proved that the local Jüttner solution must be a global one, due to the periodicity of the solution.
For more information on the relativistic Boltzmann equation on
Minkowski space we refer to [29,
23,
86] and in the nonrelativistic case we refer to the excellent
review paper by Villani [88] and the books [29
,
16].
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The Einstein-Vlasov System/Kinetic Theory
Håkan Andréasson http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-7 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de |