Discrete versus continuum relaxation modes of a hard sphere gas

Abstract

The nature of the discrete spectrum of the linear Boltzmann collision operators for a simple gas and for a gas mixture is studied numerically with a discrete ordinate method. The discrete ordinate method is found to give a large number of discrete eigenvalues whereas the expansion method with Burnett functions yields only a few converged eigenvalues. The hard sphere cross section is used in the present paper although the methods employed are readily applicable to other cross sections. The approach of the eigenvalues to the continuum boundary is studied in detail and a comparison with a previous asymptotic Wentzell–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) analysis yields excellent agreement.