On the decay of correlations in Sinai billiards with infinite horizon

Abstract

We compute the decay of the autocorrelation function of the observable $|v_x|$ in the Sinai billiard and of the observable $v_x$ in the associated Lorentz gas with an approximation due to Baladi, Eckmann and Ruelle. We consider the standard configuration where the disks is centered inside a unit square. The asymptotic decay is found to be $C(t) \sim c(R)/t$. An explicit expression is given for the prefactor $c(R)$ as a function of the radius of the scatterer. For the small scatterer case we also present expressions for the preasymptotic regime. Our findings are supported by numerical computations.