Eur. Phys. J. E (2009) 28: 395-400
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2008-10432-2

Regular Article

Effective potentials of dissipative hard spheres in granular matter

¹ Instituto de Física, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Av. Manuel Nava 6, 78290 San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, México
² Departamento de Física Aplicada, CINVESTAV del IPN, A.P. 73 “Cordemex”, 97310 Mérida, Yucatán, México

^* e-mail: gperez@mda.cinvestav.mx

Received: 5 September 2008
Revised: 5 December 2008
Accepted: 22 January 2009
Published online: 21 March 2009

Abstract

We present an experimental study of the spatial correlations of a quasi-two-dimensional dissipative gas kept in a non-static steady state via vertical shaking. From high temporal resolution images we obtain the Pair Distribution Function (PDF) for granular species with different restitution coefficients. Effective potentials for the interparticle interaction are extracted using the Ornstein-Zernike equation with the Percus-Yevick closure. From both the PDFs and the corresponding effective potentials, we find a clear increase of the spatial correlation at contact with the decreasing values of the restitution coefficient.