Molecular Chaos and the Boltzmann Equation

Abstract

The form of the Boltzmann equation implied by a general form of the molecular chaos assumption is derived. It is shown that the Bogolyubov hypothesis is a form of molecular chaos, which is compared with other forms of molecular chaos that have been used in derivations of the Boltzmann equation. The determination of the Boltzmann equation for an infinite system of rigid spheres is reduced to the evaluation of integrals that require only two‐body collision dynamics; the determination is carried explicitly only to the ternary‐correlation approximation.