English

Rigorous derivation of the Landau equation in the weak coupling limit

Mathematical Physics 2009-05-06 v1 math.MP Probability

Abstract

We examine a family of microscopic models of plasmas, with a parameter α\alpha comparing the typical distance between collisions to the strength of the grazing collisions. These microscopic models converge in distribution, in the weak coupling limit, to a velocity diffusion described by the linear Landau equation (also known as the Fokker-Planck equation). The present work extends and unifies previous results that handled the extremes of the parameter α\alpha, for the whole range (0, 1/2], by showing that clusters of overlapping obstacles are negligible in the limit. Additionally, we study the diffusion coefficient of the Landau equation and show it to be independent of the parameter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0905.0649,
  title  = {Rigorous derivation of the Landau equation in the weak coupling limit},
  author = {Kay Kirkpatrick},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.0649},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

22 pages, 8 figures, accepted to Communications in Pure and Applied Analysis