Exact solutions for the moments of the binary collision integral and its relation to the relaxation-time approximation in leading-order anisotropic fluid dynamics

Abstract

We compute the moments of the nonlinear binary collision integral in the ultrarelativistic hard-sphere approximation for an arbitrary anisotropic distribution function in the local rest frame. This anisotropic distribution function has an angular asymmetry controlled by the parameter of anisotropy $\xi$, such that in the limit of a vanishing anisotropy $\lim_{\xi \rightarrow 0} \hat{f}_{0 \mathbf{k}} = f_{0 \mathbf{k}}$, approaches the spherically symmetric local equilibrium distribution function. The corresponding moments of the binary collision integral are obtained in terms of quadratic products of different moments of the anisotropic distribution function and couple to a well defined set of lower-order moments. To illustrate these results we compare the moments of the binary collision integral to the moments of the widely used relaxation-time approximation of Anderson and Witting in case of a spheroidal distribution function. We found that in an expanding system the nonlinear Boltzmann collision term leads to twice slower equilibration than the relaxation-time approximation. Furthermore we also show that including two dynamical moments helps to resolve the ambiguity which additional moment of the Boltzmann equation to choose to close the conservation laws.