2008/05/07 by Alberto Petri, Andrea Baldassarri, Fergal Dalton +4 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Studies #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjb/e2008-00177-x
published as The European Physical Journal B - Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, vol.64, n.3-4, p.531-535, 2008 · 10 pages, 7 figures, statphys23 conference proceeding
openalex publication_date 2008/05/07 · arxiv created 2008/10/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We experimentally investigate the response of a sheared granular medium in a Couette geometry. The apparatus exhibits the expected stick-slip motion and we probe it in the very intermittent regime resulting from low driving. Statistical analysis of the dynamic fluctuations reveals notable regularities. We observe a possible stability property for the torque distribution, reminiscent of the stability of Gaussian independent variables. In this case, however, the variables are correlated and the distribution is skewed. Moreover, the whole dynamical intermittent regime can be described with a simple stochastic model, finding good quantitative agreement with the experimental data. Interestingly, a similar model has been previously introduced in the study of magnetic domain wall motion, a source of Barkhausen noise. Our study suggests interesting connections between different complex phenomena and reveals some unexpected features that remain to be explained.