The \(L^p\) Estimate for the Gain Term of the Boltzmann Collision Operator and Its Application

We prove the Hardy–Littlewood–Sobolev type \(L^p\) estimates for the gain term of the Boltzmann collision operator including Maxwellian molecule, hard potential and hard sphere models. Combined with the results of Alonso et al. (Comm Math Phys 298: 293–322, 2010) for the soft potential and Maxwellian molecule models, we provide a unified form of \(L^p\) estimate for all cutoff models which are sharp in the sense of scaling. The most striking feature of our new estimates for the hard potential and hard sphere models is that they do not increase the moment, the same as Maxwellian molecule and soft potential models. Based on these novelties, we prove the global existence and scattering of the non-negative unique mild solution for the Cauchy problem of the Boltzmann equation when the positive initial data is small in the weighted \(L^3_{x,v}\) space.