Villani conjecture on smoothing effect of the homogeneous Boltzmann equation with measure initial datum

Abstract

We justify the Villani conjecture on the smoothing effect for measure value solutions to the space homogeneous Boltzmann equation of Maxwellian type cross sections. This is the first rigorous proof of the smoothing effect for any measure value initial data except the single Dirac mass, which gives the optimal description on the regularity of solutions for positive time, caused by the singularity in the cross section. The main new ingredient in the proof is the introduction of a time degenerate coercivity estimate by using the microlocal analysis.