Phase separation and coarsening in electrostatically driven granular media

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 May 20;88(20):204301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.204301. Epub 2002 Apr 30.

Abstract

A continuum model for the phase separation and coarsening in electrostatically driven granular media is formulated in terms of a Ginzburg-Landau equation subject to conservation of the total number of grains. In the regime of well-developed clusters, the continuum model is used to derive "sharp-interface" equations that govern the dynamics of the interphase boundary. The model captures the essential physics of this system.