Kinetic Theory Description Research Articles

Dynamics and kinetic theory of hard spheres under strong confinement.

The kinetic theory description of a low-density gas of hard spheres or disks, confined between two parallel plates separated at a distance smaller than twice the diameter of the particles, is addressed starting from the Liouville equationof the system. The associated Bogoliubov, Born, Green, Kirkwood, and Yvon hierarchy of equationsfor the reduced distribution functions is expanded in powers of a parameter measuring the density of the system in the appropriate dimensionless units. The Boltzmann level of description is obtained by keeping only the two lowest orders in the parameter. In particular, the one-particle distribution function obeys a couple of equations. Contrary to what happens with a Boltzmann-like kinetic equationthat has been proposed for the same system on a heuristic basis, the kinetic theory formulated here admits stationary solutions that are consistent with equilibrium statistical mechanics, in both the absence and presence of external fields. In the latter case, the density profile is rather complex due to the coupling between the inhomogeneities generated by the confinement and by the external fields. The general theory formulated provides a solid basis for the study of the properties of strongly confined dilute gases.

Axion-photon conversion in 3D media and astrophysical plasmas

With axions now a primary candidate for dark matter, understanding their indirect astrophysical signatures is of paramount importance. Key to this is the production of photons from axions in magnetised astrophysical plasmas. While simple formulae for axion-photon mixing in 1D have been sketched several decades ago, there has recently been renewed interest in robust calculations for this process in arbitrary 3D plasmas. These calculations are vital for understanding, amongst other things, the radio production from axion dark matter conversion in neutron stars, which may lead to indirect axion dark matter detection with current telescopes or future searches, e.g., by the SKA. In this paper, we derive the relevant transport equations in magnetised plasmas. These equations describe both the production and propagation of photons in an arbitrary 3D medium due to the resonant conversion of axions into photons. They also fully incorporate the refraction of photons, and we find no evidence for a conjectured phenomenon of dephasing. Our result is free of divergences which plagued previous calculations, and our kinetic theory description provides a direct link between ray tracing and the production mechanism. These results mark an important step toward solving one of the major open questions concerning indirect searches of axions in recent years, namely how to compute the photon production rate from axions in arbitrary 3D plasmas.

Relativistic Spin Magnetohydrodynamics.

Starting from the kinetic theory description of massive spin-1/2 particles in the presence of a magnetic field, equations for relativistic dissipative nonresistive magnetohydrodynamics are obtained in the small polarization limit. We use a relaxation-time approximation for the collision kernel in the relativistic Boltzmann equation and calculate nonequilibrium corrections to the phase-space distribution function of spin-polarizable particles. We demonstrate that our framework naturally leads to emergence of the well-known Einstein-de Haas and Barnett effects. We obtain multiple transport coefficients and show, for the first time, that the coupling between spin and magnetic field appear at gradient order in the hydrodynamic equation.

Broad excitations in a 2+1D overoccupied gluon plasma

Motivated by the initial stages of high-energy heavy-ion collisions, we study excitations of far-from-equilibrium 2+1 dimensional gauge theories using classical-statistical lattice simulations. We evolve field perturbations over a strongly overoccupied background undergoing self-similar evolution. While in 3+1D the excitations are described by hard-thermal loop theory, their structure in 2+1D is nontrivial and nonperturbative. These nonperturbative interactions lead to broad excitation peaks in spectral and statistical correlation functions. Their width is comparable to the frequency of soft excitations, demonstrating the absence of soft quasiparticles in these theories. Our results also suggest that excitations at higher momenta are sufficiently long-lived, such that an effective kinetic theory description for 2+1 dimensional Glasma-like systems may exist, but its collision kernel must be nonperturbatively determined.

Heavy quark diffusion in an overoccupied gluon plasma

We extract the heavy-quark diffusion coefficient κ and the resulting momentum broadening 〈p2〉 in a far-from-equilibrium non-Abelian plasma. We find several features in the time dependence of the momentum broadening: a short initial rapid growth of 〈p2〉, followed by linear growth with time due to Langevin-type dynamics and damped oscillations around this growth at the plasmon frequency. We show that these novel oscillations are not easily explained using perturbative techniques but result from an excess of gluons at low momenta. These oscillation are therefore a gauge invariant confirmation of the infrared enhancement we had previously observed in gauge-fixed correlation functions. We argue that the kinetic theory description of such systems becomes less reliable in the presence of this IR enhancement.

Relating the Lyapunov exponents to transport coefficients in kinetic theory

In this contribution, we report our recent findings on the phenomenological applications of non-equilibrium attractors to transport phenomena in fluid dynamics. Within the kinetic theory description, we study the non-linear hydrodynamization processes of a relativistic fluid undergoing Bjorken flow. The mathematical problem of solving the Boltzmann equation with a time-dependent relaxation time is recast into an infinite set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the moments of the one-particle distribution function. The constitutive relations of each non-hydrodynamic mode can be written as a multi-parameter trans-series that encodes the non-perturbative dissipative contributions quantified by the Knudsen Kn and inverse Reynolds Re−1 numbers. At a given order in the gradient expansion, we show that summing over all the non-perturbative sectors leads to a renormalized transport coefficient. The universal behavior of the renormalized shear viscosity is determined by the Lyapunov exponent and the anomalous dimension of the first moment at the stable fixed point. We comment on the relation between our findings and the physics of non-Newtonian fluids.

Second-Order Hydrodynamics in Next-to-Leading-Order QCD.

We compute the hydrodynamic relaxation times τ_{π} and τ_{j} for hot QCD at next-to-leading order in the coupling with kinetic theory. We show that certain dimensionless ratios of second-order to first-order transport coefficients obey bounds which apply whenever a kinetic theory description is possible; the computed values lie somewhat above these bounds. Strongly coupled theories with holographic duals strongly violate these bounds, highlighting their distance from a quasiparticle description.

Time-dependent observables in heavy ion collisions. Part II. In search of pressure isotropization in the \u03c64 theory

To understand the dynamics of thermalization in heavy ion collisions in the perturbative framework it is essential to first find corrections to the free-streaming classical gluon fields of the McLerran-Venugopalan model. The corrections that lead to deviations from free streaming (and that dominate at late proper time) would provide evidence for the onset of isotropization (and, possibly, thermalization) of the produced medium. To find such corrections we calculate the late-time two-point Green function and the energy-momentum tensor due to a single 2 → 2 scattering process involving two classical fields. To make the calculation tractable we employ the scalar φ4 theory instead of QCD. We compare our exact diagrammatic results for these quantities to those in kinetic theory and find disagreement between the two. The disagreement is in the dependence on the proper time τ and, for the case of the two-point function, is also in the dependence on the space-time rapidity η: the exact diagrammatic calculation is, in fact, consistent with the free streaming scenario. Kinetic theory predicts a build-up of longitudinal pressure, which, however, is not observed in the exact calculation. We conclude that we find no evidence for the beginning of the transition from the free-streaming classical fields to the kinetic theory description of the produced matter after a single 2 → 2 rescattering.

Effective description of hot QCD medium in strong magnetic field and longitudinal conductivity

Hot QCD medium effects have been studied in the effective quasi-particle description of quark-gluon plasma. This model encodes the collective excitation of gluons and quarks/anti-quarks in the thermal medium in terms of effective quarks and gluons having non-trivial energy dispersion relation. The present investigation involves the extension of the effective quasi-particle model in strong magnetic field limit. Realizing, hot QCD medium in the strong magnetic field as an effective grand canonical system in terms of the modified quark, anti-quark and gluonic degrees of freedom, the thermodynamics has been studied. Further, the Debye mass in hot QCD medium has to be sensitive to the magnetic field, and subsequently the same has been observed for the effective hot QCD coupling. As an implication, electrical conductivity (longitudinal) has been studied within an effective kinetic theory description of hot QCD in the presence of the strong magnetic field. The hot QCD equation of state (EoS), dependence entering through the effective coupling and quasi-parton distribution function, found to have a significant impact on the longitudinal electrical conductivity in strong magnetic field background.

Steady and unsteady fluidised granular flows down slopes

Fluidisation is the process by which the weight of a bed of particles is supported by a gas flow passing through it from below. When fluidised materials flow down an incline, the dynamics of the motion differs from their non-fluidised counterparts because the granular agitation is no longer required to support the weight of the flowing layer. Instead, the weight is borne by the imposed gas flow and this leads to a greatly increased flow mobility. In this paper, a framework is developed to model this two-phase motion by incorporating a kinetic theory description for the particulate stresses generated by the flow. In addition to calculating numerical solutions for fully developed flows, it is shown that for sufficiently thick flows there is often a local balance between the production and dissipation of the granular temperature. This phenomenon permits an asymptotic reduction of the full governing equations and the identification of a simple state in which the volume fraction of the flow is uniform. The results of the model are compared with new experimental measurements of the internal velocity profiles of steady granular flows down slopes. The distance covered with time by unsteady granular flows down slopes and along horizontal surfaces and their shapes are also measured and compared with theoretical predictions developed for flows that are thin relative to their streamwise extent. For the horizontal flows, it was found that resistance from the sidewalls was required in addition to basal resistance to capture accurately the unsteady evolution of the front position and the depth of the current and for situations in which sidewall drag dominates, similarity solutions are found for the experimentally measured motion.

Kinetic and spectral descriptions of autoionization phenomena associated with atomic processes in plasmas

This investigation has been devoted to the theoretical description and computer modeling of atomic processes giving rise to radiative emission in energetic electron and ion beam interactions and in laboratory plasmas. We are also interested in the effects of directed electron and ion collisions and of anisotropic electric and magnetic fields. In the kinetic-theory description, we treat excitation, de-excitation, ionization, and recombination in electron and ion encounters with partially ionized atomic systems, including the indirect contributions from processes involving autoionizing resonances. These fundamental collisional and electromagnetic interactions also provide particle and photon transport mechanisms. From the spectral perspective, the analysis of atomic radiative emission can reveal detailed information on the physical properties in the plasma environment, such as non-equilibrium electron and charge-state distributions as well as electric and magnetic field distributions. In this investigation, a reduced-density-matrix formulation is developed for the microscopic description of atomic electromagnetic interactions in the presence of environmental (collisional and radiative) relaxation and decoherence processes. Our central objective is a fundamental microscopic description of atomic electromagnetic processes, in which both bound-state and autoionization-resonance phenomena can be treated in a unified and self-consistent manner. The time-domain (equation-of-motion) and frequency-domain (resolvent-operator) formulations of the reduced-density-matrix approach are developed in a unified and self-consistent manner. This is necessary for our ultimate goal of a systematic and self-consistent treatment of non-equilibrium (possibly coherent) atomic-state kinetics and high-resolution (possibly overlapping) spectral-line shapes. We thereby propose the introduction of a generalized collisional-radiative atomic-state kinetics model based on a reduced-density-matrix formulation. It will become apparent that the full atomic data needs for the precise modeling of extreme non-equilibrium plasma environments extend beyond the conventional radiative-transition-probability and collisional-cross-section data sets.

Retarded correlators in kinetic theory: branch cuts, poles and hydrodynamic onset transitions

In this work the collective modes of an effective kinetic theory description based on the Boltzmann equation in relaxation time approximation applicable to gauge theories at weak but finite coupling and low frequencies are studied. Real time retarded two-point correlators of the energy-momentum tensor and the R-charge current are calculated at finite temperature in flat space-times for large N gauge theories. It is found that the real time correlators possess logarithmic branch cuts which in the limit of large coupling disappear and give rise to non-hydrodynamic poles that are reminiscent of quasi-normal modes in black holes. In addition to branch cuts, correlators can have simple hydrodynamic poles, generalizing the concept of hydrodynamic modes to intermediate wavelength. Surprisingly, the hydrodynamic poles cease to exist for some critical value of the wavelength and coupling reminiscent of the properties of onset transitions.

A kinetic theory description of liquid menisci at the microscale

A kinetic model for the study of capillary flows in devices with microscale geometry ispresented.The model is based on the Enskog-Vlasov kinetic equation and provides a reasonabledescription of both fluid-fluid and fluid-wall interactions.Numerical solutions are obtained by an extension of the classical Direct Simulation MonteCarlo (DSMC) to dense fluids.The equilibrium properties of liquid menisci between two hydrophilic walls are investigatedand the validity of the Laplace-Kelvin equation at the microscale is assessed.The dynamical process which leads to the meniscus breakage is clarified.

Kinetic evolution of the glasma and thermalization in heavy-ion collisions

In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a highly occupied gluonic matter is created shortly after initial impact, which is in a nonthermal state and often referred to as the Glasma. Successful phenomenology suggests that the glasma evolves rather quickly toward the thermal quark–gluon plasma (QGP) and a hydrodynamic behavior emerges at a very early time ~ô(1) fm/c. Exactly how such "apparent thermalization" occurs and connects the initial conditions to the hydrodynamic onset, remains a significant challenge for theory as well as phenomenology. We briefly review various ideas and recent progress in understanding the approach of the glasma to the thermalized QGP, with an emphasis on the kinetic theory description for the evolution of such far-from-equilibrium and highly overpopulated, thus weakly-coupled yet strongly interacting glasma.

Kinetic Theory Microstructure Modeling in Concentrated Suspensions

When suspensions involving rigid rods become too concentrated, standard dilute theories fail to describe their behavior. Rich microstructures involving complex clusters are observed, and no model allows describing its kinematics and rheological effects. In previous works the authors propose a first attempt to describe such clusters from a micromechanical model, but neither its validity nor the rheological effects were addressed. Later, authors applied this model for fitting the rheological measurements in concentrated suspensions of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by assuming a rheo-thinning behavior at the constitutive law level. However, three major issues were never addressed until now: (i) the validation of the micromechanical model by direct numerical simulation; (ii) the establishment of a general enough multi-scale kinetic theory description, taking into account interaction, diffusion and elastic effects; and (iii) proposing a numerical technique able to solve the kinetic theory description. This paper focuses on these three major issues, proving the validity of the micromechanical model, establishing a multi-scale kinetic theory description and, then, solving it by using an advanced and efficient separated representation of the cluster distribution function. These three aspects, never until now addressed in the past, constitute the main originality and the major contribution of the present paper.

From Single-Scale to Two-Scales Kinetic Theory Descriptions of Rods Suspensions

This paper proposes a first attempt to define a two-scales kinetic theory description of suspensions involving short fibers, nano-fibers or nanotubes. We start revisiting the description of dilute enough suspensions for which microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic descriptions are available and all them have been successfully applied for describing the rheology of such suspensions. When the suspensions become too concentrated fiber-fiber interactions cannot be neglected and then classical dilute theories fail for describing the rich microstructure evolution. In the semi-concentrated regime some interaction mechanisms that mimetic the randomizing effect of fiber-fiber interactions were successfully introduced. Finally, when the concentration becomes high enough, richer microstructures can be observed. They involve a diversity of fiber clusters or aggregates with complex kinematics, and different sizes and shapes. These clusters can interact to create larger clusters and also break because the flow induced hydrodynamic forces. In this paper we propose a double-scale kinetic theory model that at the first scale consider the kinematics of the clusters, whose structure itself is described at the finest scale, the one related to the rods constituting the clusters.

A Short Review on Model Order Reduction Based on Proper Generalized Decomposition

This paper revisits a new model reduction methodology based on the use of separated representations, the so called Proper Generalized Decomposition—PGD. Space and time separated representations generalize Proper Orthogonal Decompositions—POD—avoiding any a priori knowledge on the solution in contrast to the vast majority of POD based model reduction technologies as well as reduced bases approaches. Moreover, PGD allows to treat efficiently models defined in degenerated domains as well as the multidimensional models arising from multidimensional physics (quantum chemistry, kinetic theory descriptions,…) or from the standard ones when some sources of variability are introduced in the model as extra-coordinates.

A numerical solver for a nonlinear Fokker–Planck equation representation of neuronal network dynamics

To describe the collective behavior of large ensembles of neurons in neuronal network, a kinetic theory description was developed in [15,14], where a macroscopic representation of the network dynamics was directly derived from the microscopic dynamics of individual neurons, which are modeled by conductance-based, linear, integrate-and-fire point neurons. A diffusion approximation then led to a nonlinear Fokker–Planck equation for the probability density function of neuronal membrane potentials and synaptic conductances. In this work, we propose a deterministic numerical scheme for a Fokker–Planck model of an excitatory-only network. Our numerical solver allows us to obtain the time evolution of probability distribution functions, and thus, the evolution of all possible macroscopic quantities that are given by suitable moments of the probability density function. We show that this deterministic scheme is capable of capturing the bistability of stationary states observed in Monte Carlo simulations. Moreover, the transient behavior of the firing rates computed from the Fokker–Planck equation is analyzed in this bistable situation, where a bifurcation scenario, of asynchronous convergence towards stationary states, periodic synchronous solutions or damped oscillatory convergence towards stationary states, can be uncovered by increasing the strength of the excitatory coupling. Finally, the computation of moments of the probability distribution allows us to validate the applicability of a moment closure assumption used in [15] to further simplify the kinetic theory.

Recent Advances and New Challenges in the Use of the Proper Generalized Decomposition for Solving Multidimensional Models

This paper revisits a powerful discretization technique, the Proper Generalized Decomposition—PGD, illustrating its ability for solving highly multidimensional models. This technique operates by constructing a separated representation of the solution, such that the solution complexity scales linearly with the dimension of the space in which the model is defined, instead the exponentially-growing complexity characteristic of mesh based discretization strategies. The PGD makes possible the efficient solution of models defined in multidimensional spaces, as the ones encountered in quantum chemistry, kinetic theory description of complex fluids, genetics (chemical master equation), financial mathematics, … but also those, classically defined in the standard space and time, to which we can add new extra-coordinates (parametric models, …) opening numerous possibilities (optimization, inverse identification, real time simulations, …).

On the deterministic solution of multidimensional parametric models using the Proper Generalized Decomposition

This paper focuses on the efficient solution of models defined in high dimensional spaces. Those models involve numerous numerical challenges because of their associated curse of dimensionality. It is well known that in mesh-based discrete models the complexity (degrees of freedom) scales exponentially with the dimension of the space. Many models encountered in computational science and engineering involve numerous dimensions called configurational coordinates. Some examples are the models encountered in biology making use of the chemical master equation, quantum chemistry involving the solution of the Schrödinger or Dirac equations, kinetic theory descriptions of complex systems based on the solution of the so-called Fokker–Planck equation, stochastic models in which the random variables are included as new coordinates, financial mathematics, etc. This paper revisits the curse of dimensionality and proposes an efficient strategy for circumventing such challenging issue. This strategy, based on the use of a Proper Generalized Decomposition, is specially well suited to treat the multidimensional parametric equations.