Randomly Driven Granular Fluids: large scale structure

Abstract

The nonequilibrium steady state of a granular fluid, driven by a random external force, is demonstrated to exhibit long range correlations, which behave as $\sim 1/r$ in three and $\sim \ln (L/r)$ in two dimensions. We calculate the corresponding structure factors over the whole range of wave numbers, and find good agreement with two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations. It is also shown by means of a mode coupling calculation, how the mean field values for the steady state temperature and collision frequency, as obtained from the Enskog-Boltzmann equation, are renormalized by long wavelength hydrodynamic fluctuations.

36 pages, 14 figures