Correlations in Ballistic Processes

Abstract

We investigate a class of reaction processes in which particles move ballistically and react upon colliding. We show that correlations between velocities of colliding particles play a crucial role in the long time behavior. In the reaction-controlled limit when particles undergo mostly elastic collisions and therefore are always near equilibrium, the correlations are accounted analytically. For ballistic aggregation, for instance, the density decays as n approximately t(-xi) with xi=2d/(d+3) in the reaction-controlled limit in d dimensions, in contrast with the well-known mean-field prediction xi=2d/(d+2).

Locations

• Physical Review Letters - View
• arXiv (Cornell University) - View - PDF
• HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) - View
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