A particle method for collisional kinetic equations. I. Basic theory and one-dimensional results

Abstract A new method is introduced for describing the collisional term in the framework of a particle scheme. The equations of motion of the particles contain an additional term which takes into account the collisions. Numerical techniques are shown to compute this extra term and to solve the equations. Exact results concerning stability and consistency of the schemes for the diffusion equation are derived. Some numerical results for the one-dimensional case are reported.