SP Seminar @SISSA Via Bonomea 265 Thursday 13 June at 11am: Federico BONETTO

[CM Section]

Joint ICTP/SISSA Statistical Physics Seminar

Thursday 13 June June at 11:00 a.m.
venue: SISSA, Via Bonomea 265

Federico BONETTO
Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.

Title: The Kac Model and (Non-)Equilibrium Statistical
Mechanics

Abstract:
In 1959 Mark Kac introduced a simple model for the evolution
of a gas of hard spheres undergoing elastic collisions. The main
simplification consisted in replacing deterministic collisions with
random Poisson distributed collisions.
It is possible to obtain many interesting results for this simplified
dynamics, like estimates on the rate of convergence to equilibrium
and validity of the Boltzmann equation. The price paid is that this
system has no space structure.
I will review some classical results on the Kac model and report
on an attempt to reintroduce some form of space structure and
non-equilibrium evolution in a way that preserve the mathematical
tractability of the system.