Stability of the Maxwell-Stefan System in the Diffusion Asymptotics of the Boltzmann Multi-species Equation

We investigate the diffusion asymptotics of the Boltzmann equation for gaseous mixtures, in the perturbative regime around a local Maxwellian vector whose fluid quantities solve a flux-incompressible Maxwell-Stefan system. Our framework is the torus and we consider hard-potential collision kernels with angular cutoff. As opposed to existing results about hydrodynamic limits in the mono-species case, the local Maxwellian we study here is not a local equilibrium of the mixture due to cross-interactions. By means of a hypocoercive formalism and introducing a suitable modified Sobolev norm, we build a Cauchy theory which is uniform with respect to the Knudsen number epsilon. In this way, we shall prove that the Maxwell-Stefan system is stable for the Boltzmann multi-species equation, ensuring a rigorous derivation in the vanishing limit epsilon -> 0.

Automated summary

This study investigates the diffusion asymptotics of the Boltzmann equation for gaseous mixtures in a perturbative regime around a local Maxwellian vector. By introducing a suitable modified Sobolev norm and utilizing a hypocoercive formalism, a Cauchy theory that is uniform with respect to the Knudsen number epsilon is established. It is proven that the Maxwell-Stefan system is stable for the Boltzmann multi-species equation, ensuring a rigorous derivation in the vanishing limit epsilon -> 0.