Moment inequalities and high-energy tails for the Boltzmann equations with inelastic interactions

Abstract

We study the high-energy asymptotics of the steady velocity distributions for model systems of granular media in various regimes. The main results obtained are integral estimates of solutions of the hard-sphere Boltzmann equations, which imply that the velocity distribution functions $f(v)$ behave in a certain sense as $C\exp(-r|v|^s)$ for $|v|$ large. The values of $s$, which we call {\em the orders of tails}, range from $s=1$ to $s=2$, depending on the model of external forcing. The method we use is based on the moment inequalities and careful estimating of constants in the integral form of the Povzner-type inequalities.