title: Spontaneous ratchet effect in a granular gas.
abstract: The spontaneous clustering of a vibrofluidized granular gas is employed to generate directed transport in two different compartmentalized systems: a granular fountain in which the transport takes the form of convection rolls, and a granular ratchet with a spontaneous particle current perpendicular to the direction of energy input. In both instances, transport is not due to any system-intrinsic anisotropy, but arises as a spontaneous collective symmetry breaking effect of many interacting granular particles. The experimental and numerical results are quantitatively accounted for within a flux model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Devaraj
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: van der Meer
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reimann
authors.forename: Ko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: van der Weele
authors.forename: Detlef
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lohse
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005740:Gases; D007700:Kinetics; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D005740:Gases