An asymptotic method based on a Hopf-Cole transformation for a kinetic BGK equation in the hyperbolic limit

We present an effective asymptotic method for approximating the density of particles for kinetic equations with a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) relaxation operator in the large scale hyperbolic limit. The density of particles is transformed via a Hopf-Cole transformation, where the phase function is expanded as a power series with respect to the Knudsen number. The expansion terms can be determined by solving a sequence of equations. In particular, it has been proved in [3] that the leading order term is the viscosity solution of an effective Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and we show that the higher order terms can be formally determined by solving a sequence of transport equations. Both the effective Hamilton-Jacobi equation and the transport equations are independent of the Knudsen number, and are formulated in the physical space, where the effective Hamiltonian is obtained as the solution of a nonlinear equation that is given as an integral in the velocity variable, and the coefficients of the transport equations are given as integrals in the velocity variable. With appropriate Gauss quadrature rules for evaluating these integrals effectively, the effective Hamilton-Jacobi equation and the transport equations can be solved efficiently to obtain the expansion terms for approximating the density function. In this work, the zeroth, first and second order terms in the expansion are used to obtain second order accuracy with respect to the Knudsen number. The proposed method balances efficiency and accuracy, and has the potential to deal with kinetic equations with more general BGK models. Numerical experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.