Rescaled Objective Solutions of Fokker--Planck and Boltzmann equations

Abstract

We study the long-time behavior of symmetric solutions of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation and a closely related nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation. If the symmetry of the solutions corresponds to shear flows, the existence of stationary solutions can be ruled out because the energy is not conserved. After anisotropic rescaling both equations conserve the energy. We show that the rescaled Boltzmann equation does not admit stationary densities of Maxwellian type (exponentially decaying). For the rescaled Fokker-Planck equation we demonstrate that all solutions converge to a Maxwellian in the long-time limit, however the convergence rate is only algebraic, not exponential.