  In the paper, we develop an $L^1_k\cap L^p_k$ approach to construct global
solutions to the Cauchy problem on the non-cutoff Boltzmann equation near
equilibrium in $\mathbb{R}^3$. In particular, only smallness of
$\|\mathcal{F}_x{f}_0\|_{L^1\cap L^p (\mathbb{R}^3_k;L^2(\mathbb{R}^3_v))}$
with $3/2<p\leq \infty$ is imposed on initial data $f_0(x,v)$, where
$\mathcal{F}_x{f}_0(k,v)$ is the Fourier transform in space variable. This
provides the first result on the global existence of such low-regularity
solutions without relying on Sobolev embedding $H^2(\mathbb{R}^3_x)\subset
L^\infty(\mathbb{R}^3_x)$ in case of the whole space. Different from the use of
sufficiently smooth Sobolev spaces in those classical results by
Gressman-Strain and AMUXY, there is a crucial difference between the torus case
and the whole space case for low regularity solutions under consideration. In
fact, for the former, it is enough to take the only $L^1_k$ norm corresponding
to the Weiner space as studied in Duan-Liu-Sakamoto-Strain. In contrast, for
the latter, the extra interplay with the $L^p_k$ norm plays a vital role in
controlling the nonlinear collision term due to the degenerate dissipation of
the macroscopic component. Indeed, the propagation of $L^p_k$ norm helps gain
an almost optimal decay rate $ (1+t)^{-\frac{3}{2} (1-\frac{1}{p})_+}$ of the
$L^1_k$ norm via the time-weighted energy estimates in the spirit of the idea
of Kawashima-Nishibata-Nishikawa and in turn, this is necessarily used for
establishing the global existence.
