Entropy methods for the Boltzmann equation : lectures from a special semester at the Centre Émile Borel, Institut H. Poincaré, Paris, 2001 / Fraydoun Rezakhanlou, Cédric Villani ; François Golse, Stefano Olla, editors

... This nice book is based on two courses given, respectively, by Fraydoun Rezakhanlou and Cédric Villani at the Centre Émile Borel of the Institut Henri Poincaré in a special semester organized in the fall term of 2001 by François Golse and Stefano Olla.
The first course, by Villani, deals with the issue of the relaxation to equilibrium of the Boltzmann equation. The second course, by Rezakhanlou, deals with the issue of the Boltzmann-Grad limit for deriving the Boltzmann equation from a many-particle system. The connecting thread through these lectures is the use of entropy. As recalled in the interesting introduction by Golse and Olla, variational characterizations of Maxwellian equilibria of the Boltzmann equation and variational characterizations of chaotic data in many-particle systems both illustrate how entropy can be used as a way to measure the distance to some particular "limit'' distribution (an asymptotic limit in the first case, a many-particle limit in the second case). ... (MathSciNet)