The Boltzmann equation for a one-dimensional quantum Lorentz gas (Q1809278)

The authors of this interesting paper study the macroscopic behavior of a quantum particle under the action of randomly distributed scatterers on the real line. It is shown that, in the low density limit, the Wigner function of the system converges to a probability distribution satisfying a classical linear Boltzmann equation, with a scattering cross section computed according to the quantum mechanical rules. If \(f_0\) is the Wigner function at \(t= 0\), which is positive normalized and belongs to \(C^1\cap L_1\cap L_2(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R})\), then the function \(f^\varepsilon(t)= \mathbb{E}_{sc}(f^\varepsilon_{\mathbb{C}}(t))\) (\(\mathbb{E}_{sc}\) is the expectation with respect to the scatterers distribution) converges in the sense of distributions to \(f(x,v,t)\) solving the equation \[ (\partial_t+ v\partial_x) f(x,v,t)= \lambda(|v|)\{f(x, -v,t)- f(x,v,t)\}, \] where \(\lambda(|v|)= \alpha^2|v|^{-1}\) (\(\alpha\) is a real parameter). Another result is that the function \(f^\varepsilon(x, v,t;p)= \mathbb{E}_{sc}(f^\varepsilon_{\mathbb{C}}(x, v, t;p))\) (\(f^\varepsilon_{\mathbb{C}}\) is the Wigner function) converges (in the sense of distributions) to \(f(x,v,t;p)= \rho^+(x, t)\delta(v- p)+ \rho^-(x, t)\delta(v+ p)\), where \(\rho^{\pm}\) is a weak solution of \((\partial_t\pm p\partial_x)\rho^{\pm}(x, t)= \lambda(p) \{\rho^{\mp}(x, t)- \rho^{\pm}(x, t)\}\) with initial data \(\rho^+_0(x)= \rho^+(x,t)= \delta(x, -x^+)\), \(\rho^-(x, 0)= 0\); \(\delta\) is the well known function of Dirac.