3D hard sphere Boltzmann equation: explicit structure and the transition process from polynomial tail to Gaussian tail

Abstract

We study the Boltzmann equation with hard sphere in a near-equilibrium setting. The initial data is compactly supported in the space variable and has a polynomial tail in the microscopic velocity. We show that the solution can be decomposed into a particle-like part (polynomial tail) and a fluid-like part (Gaussian tail). The particle-like part decays exponentially in both space and time, while the fluid-like part corresponds to the behavior of the compressible Navier-Stokes equation, which dominates the long time behavior and exhibits rich wave motion. The nonlinear wave interactions in the fluid-like part are precisely characterized and therefore we are able to distinguish the linear and nonlinear wave of the solution. It is notable that although the solution has polynomial tail in the velocity initially, the transition process from the polynomial to the Gaussian tail can be quantitatively revealed due to the collision with the background global Maxwellian.