2008/01/17 by P. Visco, Paolo Visco, Frédéric van Wijland +3 · 2 citations
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Gas Dynamics and Kinetic Theory #Material Dynamics and Properties #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/jp800333h
published as J. Phys. Chem. B 112 (17), 5412 (2008) · 4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2008/01/17 · openalex publication_date 2008/03/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Our interest lies in the collisional statistics in an arbitrary interacting fluid. We show that even in the low-density limit and contrary to naive expectation, the number of collisions experienced by a tagged particle in a given time does not obey Poisson law, and that, conversely, the free flight time distribution is not a simple exponential. As an illustration, the hard sphere fluid case is worked out in detail. For this model, we analytically quantify those deviations and successfully compare our predictions against molecular dynamics simulations.