High-energy velocity tails in uniformly heated granular materials

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the velocity distributions of quasi two-dimensional granular materials, which are homogeneously driven, i.e. uniformly heated, by an electromagnetic vibrator, where the translational velocity and the rotation of a single particle are Gaussian and independent. We observe the non-Gaussian distributions of particle velocity, with the density-independent high-energy tails characterized by an exponent of $\beta=1.50\pm0.03$ for volume fractions of $0.111\le\phi\le0.832$, covering a wide range of structures and dynamics. Surprisingly, our results are in excellent agreement with the prediction of the kinetic theories of granular gas, even for an extremely high volume fraction of $\phi=0.832$ where the granular material forms a crystalline solid. Our experiment reveals that the density-independent high-energy velocity tails of $\beta=1.50$ are a fundamental property of uniformly heated granular matter.