Quasi-stationary evolution of systems driven by particle evaporation

We study the quasi-stationary evolution of systems where an energetic confinement is unable to completely retain their constituents. It is performed an extensive numerical study of a gas whose dynamics is driven by binary encounters and its particles are able to escape from the container when their kinetic energies overcome a given cutou Uc .We use a parametric family of differential cross sections in order to modify the effectiveness of this equilibration mechanism. It is verified that when the binary encounters favor an effective exploration of all accessible velocities, the quasi-stationary evolution is reached when the detailed balance is imposed for all those binary collisions which do not provoke particle evaporation. However, the weakening of this effectiveness leads to energy distribution functions which could be very well fitted by using a Michie-King-like profile. We perform a theoretical analysis, in the context of Hamiltonian systems driven by a strong chaotic dynamics and particle evaporation, in order to take into account the effect of the nonhomogeneous character of the confining potential.