Uniform approximation of a Maxwellian thermostat by finite reservoirs (Q521146)

The authors study two interacting particle systems, namely a small system of \(M\) particles that interacts with a heat reservoir of \(N\) particles, where \(M << N < \infty\). Initially, the small system is out of equilibrium, but the reservoir is at equilibrium. The evolution of the two interacting systems is investigated by the use of a Kac-type walk. The Kac walk is a continuous-time Markov jump process that models the evolution of the velocities of one type of molecules in a spatially homogeneous gas by randomly selecting and then colliding two molecules at the times of Poisson clocks. The results of the article state that the small system interacting with the finite reservoir can be well approximated by the small system interacting with a Maxwellian thermostat (see also [\textit{J. Fröhlich} and \textit{Z. Gang}, Comm. Math. Phys. 314, No. 2, 525--554 (2012; Zbl 1270.35100)]). These approximations hold for all times in the \(L^2\) norm and, under less restricting assumptions on the initial state, in the Gabetta-Toscani-Wennberg metric.