A Kac model for kinetic annihilation

Abstract

In this paper we consider the stochastic dynamics of a finite system of particles in a finite volume (Kac-like particle system) which annihilate with probability $\alpha \in (0,1)$ or collide elastically with probability $1-\alpha$. We first establish the well-posedness of the particle system which exhibits no conserved quantities. We rigorously prove that, in some thermodynamic limit, a suitable hierarchy of kinetic equations is recovered for which tensorized solution to the homogenous Boltzmann with annihilation is a solution. For bounded collision kernels, this shows in particular that propagation of chaos holds true. Furthermore, we make conjectures about the limit behaviour of the particle system when hard-sphere interactions are taken into account.