Large deviations for a random speed particle

We investigate large deviations for the empirical measure of the position and momentum of a particle traveling in a box with hot walls. The particle travels with uniform speed from left to right, until it hits the right boundary. Then it is absorbed and re-emitted from the left boundary with a new random speed, taken from an i.i.d. sequence. It turns out that this simple model, often used to model the interaction of a free particle with a heat bath, displays unusually complex large deviations features that we explain in detail. In particular, if the tail of the update distribution of the speed is sufficiently oscillating, then the empirical measure does not satisfy a large deviations principle, and we exhibit optimal lower and upper large deviations functionals.