Preliminary experiments demonstrating a "directed" Maxwell's granular demon

TL;DR

This study demonstrates a granular Maxwell's demon system where a funnel-like aperture induces a significant symmetry breaking, causing most grains to transfer to the opposite container, unlike symmetrical apertures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup showing how a funnel-shaped aperture can direct granular flow, demonstrating a form of symmetry breaking in granular gases.

Findings

Funnel-like aperture causes 95% of grains to transfer to the opposite container.

Symmetrical aperture results in equal distribution of grains over time.

The system exhibits a robust symmetry breaking effect.

Abstract

In this paper, we design a system of two symmetrical containers communicated by an aperture, in which a granular gas of glass spheres is created by shaking laterally the whole system in a planetary mill. If the aperture consists in a symmetrical hole, the two halves end up with the same number of grains after some time when initially all particles are into in one of the containers. However, when a funnel-like aperture is used, a robust symmetry breaking is induced: if all the grains are originally deposited in the container facing the wide side 95% of the grains pass to the opposite side in a relatively small time.