INSTABILITY AND SPATIAL CORRELATIONS IN A DILUTE GRANULAR GAS

Direct Monte Carlo simulation is used to investigate the stability of a dilute freely evolving granular gas of hard disks. The boundary betw een stability and instability in the plane (alpha,L), when alpha is th e restitution coefficient and L the size of the system, has been delin eated. Instability is associated with the buildup of spatial correlati ons, which describes the formation of velocity vortices in the system. The simulation results are compared with theoretical predictions pres ented recently, and a good agreement is found. (C) 1998 American Insti tute of Physics. [S1070-6631(98)02411-8].