Granular Brownian Motors: role of gas anisotropy and inelasticity

Abstract

We investigate the motion of a wedge-shaped object (a granular Brownian motor), which is restricted to move along the x-axis and cannot rotate, as gas particles collide with it. We show that its steady-state drift, resulting from inelastic gas-motor collisions, is dramatically affected by anisotropy in the velocity distribution of the gas. We identify the dimensionless parameter providing the dependence of this drift on shape, masses, inelasticity, and anisotropy: the anisotropy leads to a dramatic breaking of equipartition, which should easily be visible in experimental realizations.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Granular Brownian Motor
• Noise Rectification and Fluctuations of an Asymmetric Inelastic Piston
• Momentum transfer in non-equilibrium steady states
• Motion by Stopping: Rectifying Brownian Motion of Non-spherical Particles
• Exact solution of a one-dimensional Boltzmann equation for a granular tracer particle

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Time asymmetry of the Kramers equation with nonlinear friction: fluctuation-dissipation relation and ratchet effect
• Granular transport in a horizontally vibrated sawtooth channel