High-energy tails for inelastic Maxwell models

Abstract

Monte Carlo simulations of the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation for inelastic Maxwell molecules, performed by Baldassarri et al. (cond-mat/0111066), have shown that general classes of initial distributions evolve for large times into a singular nonlinear scaling solution with a power law tail. By applying an asymptotic analysis we derive these results from the nonlinear Boltzmann equation, and obtain a transcendental equation from which the exponents, appearing in the power law tails, can be calculated. The dynamics of this model describes a dissipative flow in v-space, which drives the system to an attractor, the nonlinear scaling solution, with a constant negative rate of irreversible entropy production, given by -1/4 (1- alpha(2)), where alpha is the coefficient of restitution.