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Updated: Sep 27, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Symmetry breaking and coarsening of clusters in a prototypical driven granular gas
Eli Livne1, Baruch Meerson, Pavel V Sasorov
1Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Abstract:
Granular hydrodynamics predicts symmetry-breaking instability in a two-dimensional ensemble of nearly elastically colliding smooth hard disks driven, at zero gravity, by a rapidly vibrating sidewall. Supercritical and subcritical symmetry-breaking bifurcations of the stripe state are identified, and the supercritical bifurcation curve is computed. The cluster dynamics proceed as a coarsening process mediated by the gas phase. Well above the bifurcation point the final steady state, selected by coarsening, represents a single strongly localized densely packed "droplet."
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