Theory of Driven Granular Fluids

In the first part of the seminar I will present a short review of the basic concepts at the basis of the statistical description of granular gases, i.e.
ensembles of inelastic particles interacting via repulsive forces.

In the second part, I will consider in more detail the case of a system of inelastic particles driven by a stochastic heat bath.

The idea is to explore whether it is possible to obtain a description of systems far from equilibrium, with particular attention to granular systems, in terms of an effective potential method, similar to that widely used in molecular systems.

The crucial concept of effective interaction is that it works only in thermodynamic equilibrium and can be applied for the calculation of static quantities such as correlation functions and free energies. We investigate whether and how the effective interaction can be applied
also in non equilibrium situations.

This approach sounds very appealing because the Free Energy Density Functional, besides being a method computationally simple and physically clear, has proved to be a useful tool in the theory of nonuniform fluids with applications in interfacial and freezing phenomena.