Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2014) 129: 165
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2014-14165-4

Regular Article

Multicomponent modified Boltzmann equation and thermalization

¹ Department of Theoretical Physics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 29-33, H-1525, Budapest, Hungary
² Department of Theoretical Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budafoki út 8., H-1111, Budapest, Hungary

^* e-mail: horvath.miklos@wigner.mta.hu

Received: 20 January 2014
Revised: 3 July 2014
Accepted: 4 July 2014
Published online: 7 August 2014

Abstract

The existence of stationary distributions in a multicomponent Boltzmann equation using a non-additive kinetic energy composition rule for binary collisions is discussed. It is found that detailed balance is not achieved when —in contrast to the case of a single rule— several different composition rules are considered. The long-time behaviour of a simple momentum space model is explored numerically: saturating, heating and cooling solutions are presented. These results may be used in modelling the kinetics of multicomponent systems, such as hadronic fireballs or quark-gluon plasma.