title: Mesoscopic theory of critical fluctuations in isolated granular gases.
abstract: Fluctuating hydrodynamics is used to describe the total energy fluctuations of a freely evolving gas of inelastic hard spheres near the threshold of the clustering instability. They are shown to be governed only by vorticity fluctuations that also lead to a renormalization of the average total energy. The theory predicts a power-law divergent behavior of the scaled second moment of the fluctuations, and a scaling property of their probability distribution, both in agreement with simulations results. A more quantitative comparison between theory and simulation for the critical amplitudes and the form of the scaling function is also carried out.
authors.affiliation: Física Teórica, Universidad de Sevilla, Apartado de Correos 1065, E-41080 Sevilla, Spain. brey@us.es
authors.forename: J Javier
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Brey
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Domínguez
authors.forename: M I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: García de Soria
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Maynar
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004735:Energy Transfer; D005740:Gases / Q000737:chemistry*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D010316:Particle Size; D044367:Phase Transition; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D005740:Gases