Lyapunov Functionals and L 1 -Stability for Discrete Velocity Boltzmann Equations

Abstract

We devise Lyapunov functionals and prove uniform L1 stability for one-dimensional semilinear hyperbolic systems with quadratic nonlinear source terms. These systems encompass a class of discrete velocity models for the Boltzmann equation. The Lyapunov functional is equivalent to the L1 distance between two weak solutions and non-increasing in time. They result from computations of two point interactions in the phase space. For certain models with only transversal collisional terms there exist generalizations for three and multi-point interactions.