For the Boltzmann equation with an external force in the form of the gradient of a potential function in space variable, the stability of its stationary solutions as local Maxwellians was studied by S. Ukai et al. (2005) through the energy method. Based on this stability analysis and some techniques on analyzing the convergence rates to station- ary solutions for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, in this paper, we study the convergence rate to the above stationary solutions for the Boltzmann equation which is a fundamental equation in statistical physics for non-equilibrium rarefied gas. By combining the dissipation from the viscosity and heat conductivity on the fluid components and the dissipation on the non-fluid component through the celebrated H-theorem, a convergence rate of the same order as the one for the compressible Navier-Stokes is obtained by constructing some

In this paper we study the asymptotic nonlinear stability of discrete shocks for the Lax-Friedrichs scheme for approximating general m×m systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws. It is shown that weak single discrete shocks for such a scheme are nonlinearly stable in the Lp-norm for all p ≧ 1, provided that the sums of the initial perturbations equal zero. These results should shed light on the convergence of the numerical solution constructed by the Lax-Friedrichs scheme for the single-shock solution of system of hyperbolic conservation laws. If the Riemann solution corresponding to the given far-field states is a superposition of m single shocks from each characteristic family, we show that the corresponding multiple discrete shocks are nonlinearly stable in Lp (P ≧ 2). These results are proved by using both a weighted estimate and a characteristic energy method based on the internal structures of the discrete shocks and the essential monotonicity of the Lax-Friedrichs scheme.

In this article, we investigate the global stability of the wave patterns with the superposition of viscous contact wave and rarefaction wave for the one-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations with a free boundary. It is shown that for the ideal polytropic gas, the superposition of the viscous contact wave with rarefaction wave is nonlinearly stable for the free boundary problem under the large initial perturbations for any > 1 with being the adiabatic exponent provided that the wave strength is suitably small.

We introduce a new mean field kinetic model for systems of rational agents interacting in a game-theoretical framework. This model is inspired from non-cooperative anonymous games with a continuum of players and Mean-Field Games. The large time behavior of the system is given by a macroscopic closure with a Nash equilibrium serving as the local thermodynamic equilibrium. An application of the presented theory to a social model (herding behavior) is discussed.

In this paper, we investigate the boundary layer behavior of solutions to the one dimensional Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation for small mean free path. We consider the analogue of Maxwell's diffusive and the reflexive boundary conditions. It is found that even for such a simple model, there are boundary layers due to purely kinetic effects which cannot be detected by the corresponding Navier-Stokes system. It is also found numerically that a compressive boundary layer is not always stable in the sense that it may detach from the boundary and move into the interior of the gas as a shock layer.