The Hatano-Sasa equality: transitions between steady states in a granular gas

TL;DR

This experimental study verifies the Hatano-Sasa equality during transitions between non-equilibrium steady states in a granular gas, revealing distributional properties and potential correlations within the system.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental verification of the Hatano-Sasa equality in a granular gas system under controlled forcing cycles.

Findings

The Hatano-Sasa equality is verified with high accuracy during cyclic forcing.

Velocity fluctuations follow a generalized Gumbel distribution.

The granular gas system shows signs of correlations based on mean free path estimates.

Abstract

An experimental study is presented, about transitions between Non-Equilibrium Steady States (NESS) in a dissipative medium. The core device is a small rotating blade that imposes cycles of increasing and decreasing forcings to a granular gas, shaken independently. The velocity of this blade is measured, subject to the transitions imposed by the periodic torque variation. The Hatano-Sasa equality, that generalises the second principle of thermodynamics to NESS, is verified with a high accuracy (a few $10^{-3}$), at different variation rates. Besides, it is observed that the fluctuating velocity at fixed forcing follows a generalised Gumbel distribution. A rough evaluation of the mean free path in the granular gas suggests that it might be a correlated system, at least partially.