The massless Boltzmann equation in Minkowski spacetime

Abstract

We study the spatially homogeneous, massless Boltzmann equation in Minkowski spacetime for a certain range of hard and soft interactions. For hard interactions, we derive a Povzner-type inequality for massless particles and show that solutions exist for all time into the future. For soft interactions, we employ singular weights to control singularities at $ p = 0 $, which arise from the masslessness of particles, to obtain local existence. These results, which are among rather few proofs of existence for the massless Boltzmann equation, are motivated by our earlier work on the massless Einstein--Boltzmann system in certain cosmological settings.