The Boltzmann Equation

Abstract

Consider a monatomic gas with N molecules enclosed in a recipient of volume V. One molecule of this gas can be specified at a given time by its position x = (x₁,x₂,x₃) and velocity c = (c₁,c₂,c₃). Hence, a molecule can be specified as a point in a six-dimensional space spanned by its coordinates and velocity components, the so-called μ-phase space. In the μ-phase space, a system of N molecules is described by N points with coordinates (x _α , c _α ) for each α= 1,2,...,N.