Entropy production and convergence to equilibrium

Abstract

This set of notes was used to complement my short course on the convergence to equilibrium for the Boltzmann equation, given at Institut Henri Poincaré in November\2-December 2001, as part of the Hydrodynamic limits program organized by Stefano Olla and François Golse. The informal style is in accordance with the fact that this is neither a reference book nor a research paper. The reader can use my review paper, A review of mathematical topics in collisional kinetic theory, as a reference source to dissipate any ambiguity with respect to notation for instance. Apart from minor corrections here and there, the main changes with respect to the original version of the notes were the addition of a final section to present some more recent developments and open directions, and the change of the sign convention for the entropy, to agree with physical tradition. Irene Mazzella is warmly thanked for kindly typesetting a preliminary version of this manuscript. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.