Nonequilibrium density profiles in Lorentz tubes with thermostated boundaries (Q2802894)

The authors consider a long Lorentz tube with absorbing boundaries where particles are injected from its left hand according to a Poisson process with constant intensity. Two cases are treated: a semi-infinite tube and a large finite tube. In the former case, it is shown that at equilibrium the particle density approaches a finite limit as the distance from the boundary goes to infinity. For the finite tube, it is proved that the equilibrium density varies linearly between the limiting values at the endpoints. Moreover in this latter case, the convergence to equilibrium is described by the heat equation. In the proof of these theorems, other results are obtained for one Lorentz particle: the long time convergence to a Brownian meander of a particle conditioned not to hit the boundary for a long time and several local limit theorems for particles with a prescribed behavior in the past.