Invariance Principle for the Random Wind-Tree Process

Abstract

Consider a point particle moving through a Poisson distributed array of cubes all oriented along the axes - the random wind-tree model introduced in Ehrenfest-Ehrenfest (1912). We show that, in the joint Boltzmann-Grad and diffusive limit this process satisfies an invariance principle. That is, the process converges in distribution to a Brownian motion in a particular scaling limit. In a previous paper (2019) the authors used a novel coupling method to prove the same statement for the random Lorentz gas with spherical scatterers. In this paper we show that, despite the change in dynamics, the same strategy with some modification can be used to prove an invariance principle for the random wind-tree model.