A semigroup approach to the convergence rate of a collisionless gas (Q2224471)

The author studies the kinetic free-transport equation with Maxwell boundary conditions inside a domain in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces. This problem models the evolution of a Knudsen (collisionless) gas enclosed in the vessel. For such diluted gases, the Lebesgue measure of the set of collisions between particles is zero, hence the collision operator of the Boltzmann equation describing statistically the dynamics vanishes. Particles in the vessel move according to the free-transport equation until they meet with the boundary. The author considers the rate of convergence to equilibrium. By semigroup arguments, he proves that in the \(L^1\) norm, the polynomial rate of convergence can be extended to any smooth domain, with standard assumptions on the initial data. This is the first quantitative result in collisionless kinetic theory in dimension 2 and 3 relying on deterministic arguments that does not require any symmetry of the domain. The study includes the case where the temperature at the boundary varies. The model is also compared with a free-transport equation with absorbing boundary.