Exact resummation of hydrodynamics for arbitrary elastic scattering integral

Abstract

We consider monoenergetic particles propagating in three spatial dimensions and undergoing elastic scattering off an external medium. For an arbitrary rotationally invariant scattering kernel, we derive an exact expression for the frequency- and wave-number-dependent diffusivity, thereby resumming the hydrodynamic gradient expansion to all orders. The result is an infinite continued fraction, with each successive level determined by the relaxation rate of a higher angular harmonic of the collision operator. Thus, while ordinary diffusion probes only the first angular harmonic, the resummed constitutive relation retains information about the full scattering kernel. We show how this microscopic information manifests itself in the analytic structure of the diffusivity and in the response to a localized external source. In particular, deviations from Fick's law decay exponentially with distance, at a rate determined by the nearest complex-wavenumber singularity of the inverse diffusivity. Thus, exponentially small departures from hydrodynamics retain detailed information about the underlying scattering process.