The interplay between dissipation and long-range repulsive/attractive forces in
homogeneous, dilute, mono-disperse particle systems is studied. The
pseudo-Liouville operator formalism, originally
introduced for hard-sphere interactions, is modified such that it provides very good
predictions for systems with weak long-range forces at low densities, with the ratio of
potential to fluctuation kinetic energy as control parameter. By numerical simulations,
the theoretical results are generalized with empirical, density dependent
correction-functions up to moderate densities.
The main result of this study on dissipative cooling is an analytical prediction for the reduced cooling rate due to
repulsive forces and for the increased rate due to attractive forces. In the latter case,
surprisingly, for intermediate densities, similar cooling behavior is observed as in
systems without long-range interactions. In the attractive case, in general, dissipation
leads to inhomogeneities earlier and faster than in the repulsive case.