2006/04/07 by C. Cattuto, Ciro Cattuto, Ricardo Brito +7 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Material Dynamics and Properties #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.96.178001
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 178001 (2006) · 4 pages, 3 figures. Accepted in Phys. Rev. Letters
arxiv created 2006/04/07 · openalex publication_date 2006/05/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We numerically investigate the behavior of driven noncohesive granular media and find that two fixed large intruder particles, immersed in a sea of small particles, experience, in addition to a short-range depletion force, a long-range repulsive force. The observed long-range interaction is fluctuation-induced and we propose a mechanism similar to the Casimir effect that generates it: The hydrodynamic fluctuations are geometrically confined between the intruders, producing an unbalanced renormalized pressure. An estimation based on computing the possible Fourier modes explains the repulsive force and is in qualitative agreement with the simulations.