Singular Behavior of the Macroscopic Quantity Near the Boundary for a Lorentz-Gas Model with the Infinite-Range Potential

Abstract

Possibility of the diverging gradient of the macroscopic quantity near the boundary is investigated by a mono-speed Lorentz-gas model, with a special attention to the regularizing effect of the grazing collision for the infinite-range potential on the velocity distribution function (VDF) and its influence on the macroscopic quantity. By careful numerical analyses of the steady one-dimensional boundary-value problem, it is confirmed that the grazing collision suppresses the occurrence of a jump discontinuity of the VDF on the boundary. However, as the price for that regularization, the collision integral becomes no longer finite in the direction of the molecular velocity parallel to the boundary. Consequently, the gradient of the macroscopic quantity diverges, even stronger than the case of the finite-range potential. A conjecture about the diverging rate in approaching the boundary is made as well for a wide range of the infinite-range potentials, accompanied by the numerical evidence.