Linear response of vibrated granular systems to sudden changes in the vibration intensity - art. no. 061301

The short-term memory effects recently observed in vibration-induced compac tion of granular materials are studied. It is shown that they can be explai ned by means of quite plausible hypothesis about the mesoscopic description of the evolution of the system. The existence of a critical time separatin g regimes of "anomalous" and "normal" responses is predicted. A simple mode l fitting into the general framework is analyzed in the detail. The relatio nship between this paper and previous studies is discussed.