The Spatial Hydrodynamic Attractor: Resurgence of the Gradient Expansion
Abstract
Far-from-equilibrium kinetic systems collapse onto a hydrodynamic attractor, traditionally approximated by a gradient expansion. While temporal gradient series are non-Borel summable and require transseries completions, the analytic structure of the spatial expansion has remained elusive. Here, we derive exact closed-form Chapman--Enskog coefficients at all orders via Lagrange inversion and prove that the non-relativistic spatial gradient series, though factorially divergent, is strictly Borel summable. Furthermore, we show that this divergence originates from unbounded Galilean velocities; enforcing relativistic causality yields a convergent spatial hydrodynamic expansion with finite radius. Together with prior temporal results, our findings suggest that the hydrodynamic gradient expansion is always Borel summable, pointing to a non-perturbative route from kinetic theory to hydrodynamics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.24611,
title = {The Spatial Hydrodynamic Attractor: Resurgence of the Gradient Expansion},
author = {Mahdi Kooshkbaghi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.24611},
year = {2026}
}