Global Existence and Decay of Solutions to the Fokker-Planck-Boltzmann Equation

Abstract

The Cauchy problem to the Fokker-Planck-Boltzmann equation under Grad's angular cut-off assumption is investigated. When the initial data is a small perturbation of an equilibrium state, global existence and optimal temporal decay estimates of classical solutions are established. Our analysis is based on the coercivity of the Fokker-Planck operator and an elementary weighted energy method.