On the validity of the Boltzmann equation for short range potentials

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] (that 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 (with no attractive parts), we estimate explicitly the rate of convergence.