CONSERVATION LAWS AND EXACT SOLUTIONS OF THE BOLTZMANN EQUATION

Abstract

The distribution function f which satisfies the time-dependent Boltzmann equation (BE) for a Lorentz model with perfectly elastic random scatterers is proved nonnegative, and is computed exactly when backscattering dominates. Joule heating and Ohm’s law are recovered, although f has no steady-state limit, contrary to the relaxation-time approximation. (The conventional approximation to the time-independent BE also yields Ohm’s law but not the Joule heating and, worse, it unphysically predicts f<0.) The exact solution is compared with various effective-temperature approximations, and is shown to remain very nearly unchanged over a wide range of times even in the presence of a small amount of inelastic scattering.