On a thermostated Kac model with rescaling (Q2025620)

In this article, the authors consider the Kac model of \(N\) identical particles in one dimension having one-dimensional velocities and undergoing binary collisions. At each collision of two particles selected at random, their velocities get updated according to a given rule. In addition to that, one can introduce the interaction of the particles with in an external thermostat which replaces their velocity by a random velocity, sampled with a given density. In the present paper, the authors also consider an interaction with a global thermostat that affects the velocities of all particles of the system in a connected way. The thermostat studied here introduces a rescaling of all particles by a given factor that is chosen in such a way that the total energy is constant. This leads to a drift term in the nonlinear differential equation describing the system. The main results of the article are as follows: The authors prove ergodicity for this equation and study its equilibrium distribution. This distribution can have heavy tails. Especially interesting is its behavior at the origin which is given in detail. They also prove propagation of chaos for the particle system and determine the asymptotic rate of propagation.