Kinetic theory of 2D point vortices from a BBGKY-like hierarchy

Starting from the Liouville equation, we derive the exact hierarchy of equations satisfied by the reduced distribution functions of the single species point vortex gas in two dimensions. Considering an expansion of the solutions in powers of 1/N (where N is the number of vortices) in a proper thermodynamic limit N -> + infinity, and neglecting some collective effects, we derive a kinetic equation satisfied by the smooth vorticity field which is valid at order O(1/N). This equation was obtained previously [P.H. Chavanis, Phys. Rev. E 64 (2001) 0263091 from a more abstract projection operator formalism. If we consider axisymmetric flows and make a Markovian approximation, we obtain a simpler kinetic equation which can be studied in great detail. We discuss the properties of these kinetic equations in regard to the H-theorem and the convergence (or not) towards the statistical equilibrium state. We also study the growth of correlations by explicitly calculating the time evolution of the two-body correlation function in the linear regime. In a second part of the paper, we consider the relaxation of a test vortex in a bath of field vortices and obtain the Fokker-Planck equation by directly calculating the second (diffusion) and first (drift) moments of the increment of position of the test vortex. A specificity of our approach is to obtain general equations, with a clear physical meaning, that are valid for flows that are not necessarily axisymmetric and that take into account non-Markovian effects. A limitation of our approach, however, is that it ignores collective effects. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.