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De Newton à Boltzmann et Einstein: validation des modèles cinétiques et de diffusion

The kinetic theory of Maxwell and Boltzmann has been the subject of major scientific controversies. The alleged incompatibility between the reversible nature of the equations of classical mechanics and the increase of entropy, which, in the kinetic theory of gases, is a mathematical property of the Boltzmann equation known as the H Theorem, was one of the most basic arguments against the validity of kinetic theory. About a century later, in 1974, O. Lanford proposed a strategy to prove that the Boltzmann equation describes a particular asymptotic limit of Newton's equations of classical mechanics for a system made of a large number N of spherical particles interacting by elastic collisions. A recent work by I. Gallagher, L. Saint-Raymond and B. Texier completes Lanford's proof and extends it to the case where the interaction between particles is given by a short range potential. In a later article, T. Bodineau, I. Gallagher and L. Saint-Raymond study the dynamics of a tagged particle among N other identical particles in the same asymptotic regime, and prove the validity of the linear Boltzmann equation on arbitrary large periods of time as N tends to infinity. Using classical results on the asymptotic theory of the linear Boltzmann equation, the same authors prove that the stochastic process known as the "Brownian motion" describes a particular limit of the deterministic dynamics of interacting particles.