Nontrivial Velocity Distributions in Inelastic Gases,

P.L. Krapivsky and E. Ben-Naim

We study spatially homogeneous inelastic gases using the Boltzmann equation. We consider uniform collision rates and obtain analytical results valid for arbitrary spatial dimension d and arbitrary dissipation coefficient \epsilon. In the unforced case, we find that the velocity distribution decays algebraically, P(v,t)~ v^{-sigma}$, for sufficiently large velocities. The exponent \sigma(d,epsilon) exhibits nontrivial dependence on the spatial dimension and the dissipation coefficient.


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