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 ∼1/r in three and ∼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.