6 R. Esposito and M.

Pulvirenti

Note that the two systems are strictly equivalent, since they differ just for a change of
variable. The real assumption leading to macroscopic equations will be that the system is
initially in a state where the space variations of appropriate observables are on the macro-
scopic scale. This will be made precise below. The variables xi are assumed in a finite
cubic region Λ ⊂ Rd with periodic boundary conditions, making Λ a d-dimensional torus.
Therefore the phase space of the system (2.2) is

 N
ΓN = Λ × Rd .

The role of the number N is crucial. In a typical fluid it is of the order of the Avogadro num-
ber (≈ 1023 ) and hence in our discussion we will be interested in the asymptotic behavior
when N → ∞. The particle density of the system is given by

N εd N
n= = .
|Λ| micr |Λ|

Here |Λ|micr is the volume of the microscopic region ε−1 Λ (which shrinks to Λ after
rescaling) given by ε−d |Λ|. In order to keep the density finite, we assume

N ≈ ε −d .

The system under investigation is Hamiltonian; thus, due to the invariance under space and
time translations, the total momentum and energy are conserved. Together with the total
mass, which is obviously conserved in our setup, this gives us a specific set of conserved
quantities which play a special role in the hydrodynamical considerations. In view of this,
for any smooth function f on Λ we consider the quantities:

1

N

If0 (t) = f xi (t) ,
N
i=1

1
α
N
 
Ifα (t) = vi (t)f xi (t) , α = 1, . . . , d, (2.3)
N
i=1
N  
1
1 1
 −1    
Ifd+1 (t) = vi (t)2 + φ ε xi (t) − xj (t) f xi (t) ,
N 2 2
i=1 j
=i

where viα denotes the αth component of vi .

If f is the characteristic function of some space region A ⊂ Λ, then the Ifα (t) represent
the mass, momentum and energy of the particles in the region A at time t (the interac-
tion between A and its complement is included in Ifd+1 ). It is more convenient to have
f smooth, but the interpretation of the Ifα ’s is essentially the same.