Dynamics of freely cooling granular gases

We study dynamics of freely cooling granular gases in two dimensions using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. We find that for dilute systems the typical kinetic energy decays algebraically with time, E(t) approximately t(-1), and velocity statistics are characterized by a universal Gaussian distribution in the long time limit. We show that in the late clustering regime particles move coherently as typical local velocity fluctuations, Deltav, are small compared with the typical velocity, Deltav/v approximately t(-1/4). Furthermore, locally averaged shear modes dominate over acoustic modes. The small thermal velocity fluctuations suggest that the system can be heuristically described by Burgers-like equations.