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Granular Gases are rarefied systems of dissipatively
colliding particles - one may think of a cloud of
interstellar dust. Similar as molecular gases
Granular Gases may be described by the concepts
of classical Statistical Mechanics, such as
temperature, velocity distribution function etc.
Once initialized with a certain velocity distribution,
during their evolution Granular Gases cool down due
to inelastic collisions of their particles,
characterized by the coefficient of restitution e.
Although these systems are extremely simple, they
reveal a variety of complex behavior and structure
formation.
We investigate the properties of a Granular Gas of viscoelastic particles and consider its evolution, starting from a homogeneous distribution where no spatial structures have emerged yet. The characteristic evolution of the velocity distribution function, allows to assign a Granular Gas an age. |