Granular gases: dynamics and collective effects

Alain Barrat, Emmanuel Trizac, Matthieu H. Ernst

Published 2004-11-17, updated 2004-12-03Version 2

We present a biased review of some of the most "spectacular" effects appearing in the dynamics of granular gases where the dissipative nature of the collisions leads to a rich phenomenology, exhibiting striking differences with equilibrium gases. Among these differences, the focus here is on the illustrative examples of ``Maxwell Demon''-like experiment, modification of Fourier's law, non-equipartition of energy and non-Gaussianity of the velocity distributions. The presentation remains as non technical as possible.