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Updated: May 20, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
A two-stage approach to relaxation in billiard systems of locally confined hard spheres
Pierre Gaspard1, Thomas Gilbert
1Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Code Postal 231, Campus Plaine, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. gaspard@ulb.ac.be
Abstract:
We consider the three-dimensional dynamics of systems of many interacting hard spheres, each individually confined to a dispersive environment, and show that the macroscopic limit of such systems is characterized by a coefficient of heat conduction whose value reduces to a dimensional formula in the limit of vanishingly small rate of interaction. It is argued that this limit arises from an effective loss of memory. Similarities with the diffusion of a tagged particle in binary mixtures are emphasized.
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