The initial boundary value problem for the Boltzmann equation with soft potential (Q512184)

The authors start from the principle that if it is studied the dynamics of rarefied gas governed by the Boltzmann equation in a bounded domain, then should been taken into account the boundary effects. Even if there are several standard classes of boundary conditions for the Boltzmann equation, the authors consider a specific Boltzmann equation with given initial conditions and two types of boundary conditions, namely a diffuse reflection boundary condition and a specular reflection boundary condition. The main aim of this study is to develop a direct and unified approach to establishing the global existence of the linearized Boltzmann equation with the diffuse reflection boundary condition. More specifically, instead of applying the time decay in \(L^\infty\) to obtain the global existence, the authors first construct a local solution via an iteration method, then directly deduce the a priori estimate, which is uniform in time by means of a refined estimates on the integrals defined on the stochastic cycles and the \(L^2\) time decay for linearized equation. Finally, the global solution is obtained with the aid of the standard continuity argument.