Nontrivial velocity distributions in inelastic gases

doi:10.1088/0305-4470/35/11/103

Nontrivial velocity distributions in inelastic gases

Author

P L Krapivsky ¹ and E Ben-Naim ²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
² Theoretical Division and Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

Journal

Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General Create an alert RSS this journal

Issue

Volume 35, Number 11

Citation

P L Krapivsky and E Ben-Naim 2002 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 35 L147

doi: 10.1088/0305-4470/35/11/103

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

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Abstract

We study spatially homogeneous inelastic gases using the Boltzmann equation. We consider uniform collision rates and obtain analytical results valid for arbitrary spatial dimension d and arbitrary dissipation coefficient epsilon . In the unforced case, we find that the velocity distribution decays algebraically, P(v,t)~v^-σ, for sufficiently large velocities. The exponent σ(d, epsilon ) exhibits nontrivial dependence on the spatial dimension and the dissipation coefficient.

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