Abstract

We consider a classical system of point particles interacting by means of a short range potential. We prove that, in the low–density (Boltzmann–Grad) limit, the system behaves, for short times, as predicted by the associated Boltzmann equation. This is a revisitation and an extension of the thesis of King [9] (appeared after the well known result of Lanford [10] for hard spheres) and of a recent paper by Gallagher et al [5]. Our analysis applies to any stable and smooth potential. In the case of repulsive potentials