Propagation of Chaos for a Thermostated Kinetic Model

Abstract

We consider a system of N point particles moving on a d-dimensional torus $\mathbb{T}^{d}$ . Each particle is subject to a uniform field E and random speed conserving collisions $\mathbf{v}_{i}\to\mathbf{v}_{i}'$ with $|\mathbf{v}_{i}|=|\mathbf{v}_{i}'|$ . This model is a variant of the Drude-Lorentz model of electrical conduction (Ashcroft and Mermin in Solid state physics. Brooks Cole, Pacific Grove, 1983). In order to avoid heating by the external field, the particles also interact with a Gaussian thermostat which keeps the total kinetic energy of the system constant. The thermostat induces a mean-field type of interaction between the particles. Here we prove that, starting from a product measure, in the limit N→∞, the one particle velocity distribution f(q,v,t) satisfies a self consistent Vlasov-Boltzmann equation, for all finite time t. This is a consequence of “propagation of chaos”, which we also prove for this model.