Controlled Dynamics of Interfaces in a Vibrated Granular Layer

Abstract

We present experimental study of a topological excitation, {\it interface}, in a vertically vibrated layer of granular material. We show that these interfaces, separating regions of granular material oscillation with opposite phases, can be shifted and controlled by a very small amount of an additional subharmonic signal, mixed with the harmonic driving signal. The speed and the direction of interface motion depends sensitively on the phase and the amplitude of the subharmonic driving.

4 pages, 6 figures, RevTex

References in corpus (1)

• Localized and Cellular Patterns in a Vibrated Granular Layer

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Patterns and Collective Behavior in Granular Media: Theoretical Concepts
• Electrostatically-Driven Granular Media: Phase Transitions and Coarsening
• Phase Bubbles and Spatiotemporal Chaos in Granular Patterns
• Coarsening of granular clusters: two types of scaling behaviors
• Kink-induced transport and segregation in oscillated granular layers