Stability of the Maxwell-Stefan system in the diffusion asymptotics of the Boltzmann multi-species equation

TL;DR

This paper rigorously proves the stability of the Maxwell-Stefan system as a diffusion limit of the Boltzmann multi-species equation, using hypocoercivity and uniform estimates in the perturbative regime.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypocoercive framework and modified Sobolev norm to establish the stability and rigorous derivation of the Maxwell-Stefan system from the Boltzmann equation.

Findings

Proves stability of the Maxwell-Stefan system in the diffusion limit.

Develops a uniform Cauchy theory for the Boltzmann multi-species equation.

Establishes rigorous connection between Boltzmann equation and Maxwell-Stefan system.

Abstract

We investigate the diffusion asymptotics of the Boltzmann equation for gaseous mixtures, in the perturbative regime around a local Maxwellian vector whose fluid quantities solve a flux-incompressible Maxwell-Stefan system. Our framework is the torus and we consider hard-potential collision kernels with angular cutoff. As opposed to existing results about hydrodynamic limits in the mono-species case, the local Maxwellian we study here is not a local equilibrium of the mixture due to cross-interactions. By means of a hypocoercive formalism and introducing a suitable modified Sobolev norm, we build a Cauchy theory which is uniform with respect to the Knudsen number $\eps$. In this way, we shall prove that the Maxwell-Stefan system is stable for the Boltzmann multi-species equation, ensuring a rigorous derivation in the vanishing limit $\eps\to 0$.