Scaling Dynamics of a Massive Piston in a Cube Filled With Ideal Gas: Exact Results

Abstract

We continue the study of the time evolution of a system consisting of a piston in a cubical container of large size $L$ filled with an ideal gas. The piston has mass $M\sim L^2$ and undergoes elastic collisions with $N\sim L^3$ gas particles of mass $m$. In a previous paper, Lebowitz, Piasecki and Sinai considered a scaling regime, with time and space scaled by $L$, in which they argued heuristically that the motion of the piston and the one particle distribution of the gas satisfy autonomous coupled differential equations. Here we state exact results and sketch proofs for this behavior.

18 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Dynamics of a Massive Piston in an Ideal Gas: Oscillatory Motion and Approach to Equilibrium

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• The periodic oscillation of an adiabatic piston in two or three dimensions