Spectral gap for stochastic energy exchange model with nonuniformly positive rate function

We give a lower bound on the spectral gap for a class of stochastic energy exchange models. In 2011, Grigo et al. introduced the model and showed that, for a class of stochastic energy exchange models with a uniformly positive rate function, the spectral gap of an N-component system is bounded from below by a function of order N.2. In this paper, we consider the case where the rate function is not uniformly positive. For this case, the spectral gap depends not only on N but also on the averaged energy E, which is the conserved quantity under the dynamics. Under some assumption, we obtain a lower bound of the spectral gap which is of order C(E)N.2 where C(E) is a positive constant depending on E. As a corollary of the result, a lower bound of the spectral gap for the mesoscopic energy exchange process of billiard lattice studied by Gaspard and Gilbert [ J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp. 2008 (2008) p11021, J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp. 2009 (2009) p08020] and the stick process studied by Feng et al. [ Stochastic Process. Appl. 66 (1997) 147.182] are obtained.