Title: Energy Cascades and Power Law Tails in Granular Gases

Author (Talk): Jonathan Machta, UMass Amherst

Abstract:

This talk will focus on a class of non-trivial stationary solutions of the inelastic Boltzmann equation with no external driving. These solutions have power law tails in the velocity distribution and infinite dissipation. Steady states that are similar to the stationary solutions out to an upper cut-off can be physically realized in driven granular systems. The driving mechanism is to rarely inject a large amount energy into the system by boosting a single particle to a high velocity. Results of event driven simulations that confirm the theoretical ideas will be presented. co-authors: Eli Ben-Naim (Los Alamos) Wenfeng Kang (UMass) Ben Machta (Cornell)