title: A two-stage approach to relaxation in billiard systems of locally confined hard spheres.
abstract: We consider the three-dimensional dynamics of systems of many interacting hard spheres, each individually confined to a dispersive environment, and show that the macroscopic limit of such systems is characterized by a coefficient of heat conduction whose value reduces to a dimensional formula in the limit of vanishingly small rate of interaction. It is argued that this limit arises from an effective loss of memory. Similarities with the diffusion of a tagged particle in binary mixtures are emphasized.
authors: Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Code Postal 231, Campus Plaine, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. gaspard@ulb.ac.be
authors: Pierre
authors: P
authors: Gaspard
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Gilbert