Long-time-tail effects on Lyapunov exponents of a random, two-dimensional field-driven Lorentz gas (Q5928248)

Consider charged particles moving in a two-dimensional field of randomly placed, nonoverlapping hard disk scatterers, subject to a ``thermostatted'' electric field in which the kinetic energy of each particle remains fixed. The particles do not interact with each other, i.e., they form a Lorentz gas. The BBGKY hierarchy equations and asymptotic expansions are used to approximate higher density of the scatterers' effects on the Lyapunov exponents of a reference particle trajectory. In particular, the effects of correlated collision sequences (``ring events,'' in which a recollision occurs after a sequence of collisions with other scatterers) are studied in detail. For small values of the applied electric field these ring terms are seen to make nonanalytic and field-dependent contributions of the order \(\widetilde\varepsilon \ln{\widetilde\varepsilon},\) where \(\widetilde\varepsilon\) is a dimensionless parameter measuring the strength of the electric field. A discussion is given which explains these nonanalytic terms as a consequence of the change of the collision frequencey due to the presence of the electrostatic field.