# REFERENCES

Comment on “Lyapunov Exponent of a Many Body System and Its Transport Coefficients”

In a recent Letter, Barnett, Tajima, Nishihara, Ueshima and Furukawa  obtained a theoretical expression for the maximum Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda _1`$ of a dilute gas. They conclude that $`\lambda _1`$ is proportional to the cube root of the self-diffusion coefficient $`D`$, independent of the range of the interaction potential. They validate their conjecture with numerical data for a dense one-component plasma, a system with long-range forces. We claim that their result is highly non-generic. We show in the following that it does not apply to a gas of hard spheres, neither in the dilute nor in the dense phase.

Systems of hard spheres have properties similar to real fluids and solids and provide a reference for successful perturbation theories . Simulations with this model were able to uncover fundamental aspects of collective particle dynamics such as recollisions and the “cage” effect . Hard-sphere systems are also paradigms for the chaotic and ergodic properties of many-body systems with short range interactions, and were shown to have a positive Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy .

For dilute gases, Krylov  provided an analytical estimate for the maximum Lyapunov exponent,

$$\lambda _1=\left(32\pi K/3mN\right)^{1/2}\sigma ^2n\mathrm{log}\left(\pi \sigma ^3n/\sqrt{2}\right),$$
(1)   
where $`K`$ is the kinetic energy, $`N`$ is the number of particles, $`m`$ the particle mass, $`n`$ the number denstiy, and $`\sigma `$ is the hard sphere diameter. This expression has been verified numerically (apart from a factor $`2.8`$), and has been extended to larger densities .

The diffusion coefficient for dilute hard-sphere gases is well approximated by the Enskog expression 

$$D_E=\left(3\pi K/32mN\right)^{1/2}\frac{1}{n\pi \sigma ^2}\left[1+\frac{5n\pi \sigma ^3}{12}\right]^1.$$
(2)   
A comparison of Eqs. (1) and (2) reveals that, in the dilute gas limit, the proposed relation $`\lambda _1D^{1/3}`$ of Barnett et al. cannot be satisfied. Moreover, we combine in Fig. 1 recent simulation results for $`D`$ and $`\lambda _1`$, which were obtained for a system of 500 hard spheres over the full range of fluid densities $`(0.0001<n\sigma ^3<0.89)`$. Reduced units are used for which $`\sigma `$, $`m`$, and the kinetic energy per particle $`K/N`$ are all unity. One observes that these data are not consistent with the proposed $`D^{1/3}`$-dependence (solid line), neither for low densities nor for large.

We conclude that the conjecture by Barnett et al. does not apply to many-body systems with short-range interactions. But even its applicability for long-range interactions is doubtful. A one-dimensional gravitational system with finite $`N`$ exhibits a positive $`\lambda _1`$ , whereas this clustering and confining system does not show diffusion. We also note that, while the theoretical expression (26) in Ref.  has been obtained for a dilute gas, the data in Fig. 1 of Ref.  are for a dense plasma with a Coulomb coupling costant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ ranging from 1 to 150. As reported by the same authors , for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }>1`$ the plasma behaves as a liquid and not as a gas. The dilute gas limit is recovered only for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1`$ .

We thank M. Antoni, U. Balucani, A. Rapisarda, and S. Ruffo for useful discussions.

A. Torcini<sup>(1)</sup>, Ch. Dellago<sup>(2)</sup>, and H.A. Posch<sup>(3)</sup>

(1) Dipartimento di Energetica, via S. Marta 3, I-50139 Firenze, Italy   
INFM, Unità di Firenze, Italy.   
(2) Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.   
(3) Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Wien, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Wien, Austria

PACS numbers: 05.45.+b, 05.60.+w