The Inelastic Maxwell Model

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates the dynamics of inelastic gases using the Maxwell model, revealing unique velocity distribution behaviors, multiscaling moments, and phase transitions in impurity interactions.

Contribution

It provides an exact analytical solution to the Boltzmann equation for inelastic gases, impurities, and mixtures, highlighting novel velocity distribution features and phase transition phenomena.

Findings

Velocity distributions develop algebraic high-energy tails.

Moments exhibit multiscaling asymptotic behavior.

Impurity behavior shows phase transitions depending on conditions.

Abstract

Dynamics of inelastic gases are studied within the framework of random collision processes. The corresponding Boltzmann equation with uniform collision rates is solved analytically for gases, impurities, and mixtures. Generally, the energy dissipation leads to a significant departure from the elastic case. Specifically, the velocity distributions have overpopulated high energy tails and different velocity components are correlated. In the freely cooling case, the velocity distribution develops an algebraic high-energy tail, with an exponent that depends sensitively on the dimension and the degree of dissipation. Moments of the velocity distribution exhibit multiscaling asymptotic behavior, and the autocorrelation function decays algebraically with time. In the forced case, the steady state velocity distribution decays exponentially at large velocities. An impurity immersed in a uniform inelastic gas may or may not mimic the behavior of the background, and the departure from the background behavior is characterized by a series of phase transitions.