Random billiards with wall temperature and associated Markov chains

Abstract

By a random billiard we mean a billiard system in which the standard rule of specular reflection is replaced with a Markov transition probabilities operator P that gives, at each collision of the billiard particle with the boundary of the billiard domain, the probability distribution of the post-collision velocity for a given pre-collision velocity. A random billiard with microstructure, or RBM for short, is a random billiard for which P is derived from a choice of geometric/mechanical structure on the boundary of the billiard domain, as explained in the text. Such systems provide simple and explicit mechanical models of particle–surface interaction that can incorporate thermal effects and permit a detailed study of thermostatic action from the perspective of the standard theory of Markov chains on general state spaces. The main focus of this paper is on the operator P itself and how it relates to the mechanical and geometric features of the microstructure, such as mass ratios, curvatures, and potentials. The main results are as follows: (1) we give a characterization of the stationary probabilities (equilibrium states) of P and show how standard equilibrium distributions studied in classical statistical mechanics such as the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution and the Knudsen cosine law arise naturally as generalized invariant billiard measures; (2) we obtain some of the more basic functional theoretic properties of P, in particular that P is under very general conditions a self-adjoint operator of norm 1 on a Hilbert space to be defined below, and show in a simple but somewhat typical example that P is a compact (Hilbert–Schmidt) operator. This leads to the issue of relating the spectrum of eigenvalues of P to the geometric/mechanical features of the billiard microstructure; (3) we explore the latter issue, both analytically and numerically in a few representative examples. Additionally, (4) a general algorithm for simulating the Markov chains is given based on a geometric description of the invariant volumes of classical statistical mechanics. Our description of these volumes may have independent interest.