On a time and space discretized approximation of the Boltzmann equation in the whole space

Abstract

In this paper, convergence results on the solutions of a time and space discrete model approximation of the Boltzmann equation for a gas of Maxwellian particles in a bounded domain, obtained by Babovsky and Illner [1989], are extended to approximate the solutions of the Boltzmann equation in the whole physical space. This is done for a class of particle interactions including Maxwell and soft cut-off potentials in the sense of Grad. The main result shows that the solutions of the discrete model converge in $\mathbb{L}^1$ to the solutions of the Boltzmann equation, when the discretization parameters go simultaneously to zero. The convergence is uniform with respect to the discretization parameters. In addition, a sufficient condition for the implementation of the main result is provided.