Two methods to measure granular gas temperature

Abstract

Grains are vibrated so as to achieve a granular gas, here regarded as an archetype of a dissipative non equilibrium steady state (NESS). We report on two distinct and concordant experimental measures of the system effective temperature. To do so, a blade fastened to the shaft of a small DC-motor, immersed in the grains, behaves as a driven 1D Brownian rotator, which is used as both actuator and sensor simultaneously. On the one hand, the Gallavotti–Cohen fluctuation theorem, which involves a measure of the asymmetry of the energy exchanges between the rotator and the NESS reservoir, provides a first effective temperature. On the other hand, the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, which involves the relation between the spontaneous fluctuations and the response to a weak perturbation, defines a second, independent, effective temperature. Both methods, even though they are based on drastically different ideas, give nicely concordant results.