Proof of the Boltzmann-Sinai ergodic hypothesis for typical hard disk systems (Q1411979)

It is considered the \(\nu\)-dimensional, \(\nu\geq 2\), standard flat unit torus \(\mathbb{T}^\nu=\mathbb{R}^\nu/\mathbb{Z}^\nu\) as the vessel containing \(N\geq 2\) hard balls \(B_1,\ldots,B_N\) with positive masses \(m_1,\dots,m_N\) and common radius \(r>0\), which is not so big so that even the interior of the arising configuration space \(\mathbf{Q}\) is connected. The center of the ball \(B_i\) is \(q_i\in\mathbb{T}^\nu\) and \(v_i=\dot{q}_i\) is its velocity. The uniform motion of the balls \(B_1,\ldots,B_N\) inside the container with half a unit of total kinetic energy \(E=\frac12\sum_{i=1}^Nm_i\|v_i\|^2=\frac12\) is investigated under the assumption that the collisions between balls are perfectly elastic. Together with kinetic energy \(E\) the total momentum \(I=\sum_{i=1}^Nm_iv_i\in\mathbb{R}^\nu\) is also the trivial first integral of the motion, therefore the standard reduction \(I=0\) can be made. Due to the translation invariance of the arising dynamic system the configuration space is factorized with respect to uniform spatial translations \((q_1,\dots,q_N)\sim (q_1+a_1,\dots,q_N+a_N)\) for all translation vectors \(a\in\mathbb{T}^\nu\). The configuration space \(\mathbf Q\) of the arising flow is then the factor-torus \(((\mathbb{T}^\nu)^N/\sim) \cong\mathbb{T}^{\nu(N-1)}\) minus the cylinders \(C_{ij}=\{ (q_1,\dots,q_N)\in\mathbb{T}^{\nu(N-1)}\mid \text{dist}(q_i,q_j)<2r \}\), \(1\leq i<j\leq N\) corresponding to the forbidden overlap between the \(i\)-th and \(j\)-th balls. Then the compound configuration \(q=(q_1,\dots,q_N)\in\mathbf{Q}=\mathbb{T}^{\nu(N-1)}\setminus\bigcup_{1\leq i\leq j\leq N}C_{ij}\) moves in \(\mathbf{Q}\) uniformly with unit speed and bounces back from the boundaries \(\partial C_{ij}\) of the cylinders \(C_{ij}\) according to the classic law of geometric opties (the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence). More precisely: the post-collision velocity \(v^t\) can be obtained from the pre-collision velocity \(v^{-}\) by the orthogonal reflection across the tangent hyperplane of the boundary \(\partial\mathbf{Q}\) at the point of collision, where ``orthogonal'' should be understood with respect to the natural Riemannian metric \(\|dq\|^2=\sum_{i=1}^Nm_i\|dq_i\|^2\) in the configuration space \(\mathbf{Q}\). For the normalized Liouville measure \(\mu\) of the arising flow \(\{S^t\}\) one has \(d\mu=\text{const}\cdot dq\cdot dv\), where \(dq\) is the Riemannian volume in \(\mathbf{Q}\) induced by the above metric and \(dv\) is the surface measure, determined by the restriction of the Riemannian metric, on the sphere of compound velocities \(S^{\nu(N-1)-1}=\{ (v_1,\dots,v_N)\in(\mathbb{R}^\nu)^N\mid \sum_{i=1}^Nm_iv_i=0,\; \sum_{i=1}^Nm_1\|v_i\|^2=1\}\). The phase space \(\mathbf{M}\) of the flow \(\{S^t\}\) is the unit tangent bundle \(\mathbf{Q}\times \mathbb{S}^{d-1}\) of the configuration space \(\mathbf{Q}\). At the boundary \(\partial\mathbf{Q}\) of \(\mathbf{Q}\) one has to glue together the pre-collision and post-collision velocities in order to form the phase space \(\mathbf{M}\), so \(\mathbf{M}\) is equal to the unit tangent bundle \(\mathbf{Q}\times\mathbb{S}^{d-1}\) modulo this identification. Some more complicated definition of hard ball systems with arbitrary masses leads to the flow denoted by \((\mathbf{M}, \{S^t\}_{t\in\mathbb{R}},\mu)\). The main result of the reviewed article consists in the proof of the Boltzmann-Sinai ergodic hypothesis for typical hard disk systems, i.e. for \(\nu=2\): In the case \(\nu=2\) for almost every selection \((r; m_1,\dots, m_N)\) of the outer geometric parameters from the region \(0<r<r_0\), \(m_i>0\) (the inequality \(r=r_0\) just describes the region where the interiour of the configuration space is connected) it is true that the billiard flow \((\mathbf{M}_{\overrightarrow{m},r}\{S^t\},\mu_{\overrightarrow{m},r})\) of the \(N\)-disk system is ergodic and completely hyperbolic. Then, following from the results of Chernov-Haskel [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 16, 19--44 (1996; Zbl 0853.58081)] and Ornstein-Weiss [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 18, 441--456 (1998; Zbl 0915.58076)], such a semi-dispersive billiard syIstem actually enjoys the B-mixing property.