Kinetic Theory of dilute gases under nonequilibrium conditions

The significance of the recent finding of the velocity distribution function of the steady-state Boltzmann equation under a steady heat current obtained by Kim and Haykawa (J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 72, 1904 (2003)) is discussed. Through the stability analysis, it seems that the steady solution is stable. One of possible applications to the nonequiliburium Knudsen effect in which one cell at equilibrium is connected to another cell under the steady heat conduction is discussed. This solution apparently shows that steady-state thermodynamics proposed by Sasa and Tasaki cannot be used in a naive setup. The preliminary result of our simulation based on molecular-dynamics for nonequilibrium Knudsen effect is also presented to verify the theoretical argument.