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# Matter in the Local Universe

## 1 Introduction

LSS studies of the nearby universe are arguably ideal to address the question posed by the title of this conference. Indeed, if all the mass in the universe were locked into galaxies, complete redshift surveys of galaxies would provide the data required to fully characterize the matter distribution. However, we have learned that the luminous matter associated to galaxies represents a small fraction of the mass density of the universe, and that galaxies may be biased relative to the underlying distribution of matter. Still, if structures grow as a result of gravity alone, observation of the peculiar velocity of galaxies provides the means to probe the distribution of the total matter. In the standard picture for the formation of cosmic structures via gravitational instability the peculiar velocity of a galaxy is generated by fluctuations in the mass distribution. For galaxies outside virialized systems, linear perturbation theory predicts

$$𝐯(𝐫)\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.6}H_o}{4\pi }d^3r^{}\delta _m\frac{(𝐫^{}𝐫)}{|𝐫^{}𝐫|^3}.$$
(1)
This can also be expressed in the following differential form

$$𝐯=\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.6}\delta _m,$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the mass density parameter, $`H_o`$ is the Hubble constant and $`\delta _m`$ is the mass density fluctuation field. If galaxies are fair tracers of the underlying mass distribution and galaxy biasing is linear then $`\delta _g=b\delta _m`$, where $`\delta _g`$ is the galaxy density contrast and $`b`$ is the bias parameter for a given population of mass tracers. The above equations show that by mapping the peculiar velocity field one can determine the distribution of mass and measure the parameter $`\beta =\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.6}/b`$ by comparing the reconstructed density field with that observed for galaxies or by comparing the measured velocity field with the predicted gravity field generated by fluctuations of the galaxy density field.

These simple ideas have been the underlying motivation for the major wide-angle redshift surveys of optical and infrared galaxies and the Tully-Fisher (TF) and $`D_n\sigma `$ redshift-distance surveys conducted over the past two decades. In this contribution we review all of these efforts, giving special emphasis to the results obtained from recently completed redshift-distance surveys. In section 2, we briefly mention the redshift surveys that have contributed to our understanding of the local galaxy distribution and those which have played a major role in the analysis of peculiar velocity data. In Section 3, we review the redshift-distance surveys and the peculiar velocity catalogs that have been used to map the peculiar velocity field in the nearby universe. In section 4, the most recent surveys are used to reconstruct the velocity and density fields and to measure $`\beta `$. These results are also compared with those obtained in earlier works. Finally, in Section 5 we briefly summarize the current status of the field.

## 2 Galaxy Distribution

Over the past two decades the number of redshift surveys and redshift data has greatly increased and a complete review is beyond the scope of the present contribution and can be found elsewhere . Here we point out two classes of surveys that have had a strong bearing on some of the issues discussed here. The first class consists of wide-angle, dense sampling surveys such as the CfA2  and SSRS2  which revealed for the first time the full complexity of the galaxy distribution. The discovery of extended, coherent wall-like structures and of large regions devoid of luminous matter with scales comparable to the survey depth represented a serious challenge to the prevailing theories of structure formation and evolution. Furthermore, these surveys probed relatively large volumes which allowed for reasonable estimates of the power-spectrum of the galaxy density fluctuations to be made for the first time . Even though unable to reach very large scales, when COBE normalized, comparison with N-body simulations demonstrated that the results were consistent with a low-$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ cosmological model and an unbiased galaxy distribution. The PS was well described by a shape parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.2`$, consistent with other determinations . Attempts were also made to study the small-scale velocity field by analyzing the redshift-space distortions. However, the small number of independent structures within the sampled volume made the results extremely sensitive to shot-noise .

These early surveys were followed by the considerably deeper LCRS  which demonstrated unambiguously that the largest scales of inhomogeneities had finally been reached. Quantitative analyses of the LCRS, by and large confirmed earlier statistical results, albeit with considerably smaller errors. More recently, the first results of the 2dFGRS project have become available. The survey consists of over 100,000 galaxies to a depth comparable to the LCRS, allowing for precise measurements of redshift-space distortions and large-scale power spectrum. Analysis of the redshift distortions caused by large-scale infall velocities yields a value of $`\beta _o=0.43`$ , where $`\beta _o`$ refers to optical galaxies. Assuming a relative bias $`b_o/b_I1.3`$ between optical and IRAS galaxies this implies $`\beta _I0.56`$. The derived galaxy power-spectrum  was found to be well-represented by a shape parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.2`$, in good agreement with previous determinations. These results provide important constraints on the mass power-spectrum which can later be compared with those obtained using cosmic flows to test for consistency.

The second class of redshift surveys worth mentioning in the present context is that involving galaxy samples extracted from the IRAS survey such as the 1.9 Jy, the 1.2 Jy and the PSCz  redshift surveys. While sparsely sampling the galaxy distribution, these surveys provide a sky coverage unmatched by optical surveys. This all-sky coverage allows a more reliable determination of the gravity field induced by fluctuations of the galaxy density field which can be compared to the measured peculiar velocity field to estimate the parameter $`\beta `$.

From the above discussion, it is clear that by themselves redshift surveys are more useful for studying the properties of galaxies than as cosmological probes. However, combining them with redshift independent distances to map out the peculiar velocity field of galaxies and to predict the peculiar velocity field from galaxy density fluctuations provide powerful tools to probe the nature of the matter distribution and its relation with the galaxy distribution.

## 3 Mapping the Peculiar Velocity Field

The radial component of the peculiar velocity is given by

$$U=czd$$

where $`d`$ is an estimate of the galaxy distance derived from a secondary distance indicator. Most of the available samples rely on the TF and Fundamental Plane relations for spirals and early-type galaxies, respectively, with typical errors in distance of $`20\%`$. However, samples based on distance indicators with significant smaller errors, such as those based on surface brightness fluctuations and nearby Type Ia supernovae, are slowly growing and have already been successfully used to measure $`\beta `$.

In contrast to the rapid growth of samples with complete redshift information, redshift-distance samples have been difficult to gather. There are various practical reasons for that. First, to ensure the uniformity of the data and of the sky coverage requires coordinated observations in both hemispheres. Second, TF distances require the measurement of the rotational velocity of the galaxy either from the HI line width, which can only be efficiently measured in the northern hemisphere, or from measurements of optical rotation curves, a challenging observation. Third, for early-type galaxies, high signal-to-noise spectra are required for accurate measurements of the velocity dispersion. Finally, both distance indicators require high-quality photometric data. Table 1 summarizes the redshift-distance surveys conducted to date. The table includes only wide-angle redshift-distance surveys and the number of objects is just indicative of the sample size. Not included are the various surveys conducted to measure distances and peculiar velocities of clusters of galaxies which have been used to constrain the amplitude of the bulk flow on very large scales.

Early studies  focused on the properties of the flow field near Virgo. However, it was soon realized that the assumption of a spherical infall was too restrictive and that Virgo alone could not explain the motion of the Local Group relative to the CMB. A major contribution to the field was the work of the 7 Samurai, the first to probe well beyond the local supercluster, albeit sparsely. Analyses of this sample led to startling results such as the measurement of a large amplitude bulk flow, and the discovery of the Great Attractor, a large mass concentration associated with the Hydra-Centaurus complex. Among the main conclusions of this work was that the large peculiar velocities measured implied large values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, a result that placed cosmic flows at odds with several other analyses. By the end of the 80’s the first attempt to produce a homogeneous catalog by merging different peculiar velocity data set was made (Mark II) and used to obtain the first map of the dark matter in the nearby universe . Even though providing an important first glimpse of the dark matter distribution, this early map showed that important regions of the sky were severely undersampled.

In subsequent years a major effort was made to expand the available sample to confirm the conclusions of the 7S and to improve the mass maps. These efforts included small surveys of specific areas of the sky  and major TF surveys of spirals, such as those carried out by Matthewson and collaborators  and the SFI survey , and FP surveys of early-type galaxies, such as the recently completed ENEAR survey

Trying to capitalize as much as possible on all of the available data, Willick and collaborators assembled the data from these different surveys into a catalog (Mark III) consisting of about 3000 galaxies, predominantly spirals, with measured peculiar velocities. The Mark III catalog, which does not include the more recent all-sky SFI and ENEAR surveys, has been extensively used in the analyses of peculiar velocity data. While considerable effort was made to ensure uniformity, it is a compilation of heterogeneous data sets. As illustrated in figure 11 of Kollat et al. , it lacks uniformity in sky coverage due to the uneven coverage of the main data sets included in the compilation. While the availability of this catalog prompted the development of several techniques to analyze peculiar velocity data and efforts to understand possible bias, its use has led to conflicting results. The reasons for the discrepancies are not understood and could indicate limitations of the data or of the methods used. Efforts to re-calibrate this catalog using new observations  are still underway.

In this context the completion of the SFI I-band TF survey of late spirals and the ENEAR $`D_n\sigma `$ survey of early-type galaxies are important additions, providing homogeneous samples of comparable sizes. Figure 1 shows the projected distribution of galaxies in these two surveys. In contrast to the Mark III compilation, the sky coverage of both surveys is remarkably uniform and nearly all of the data consist of new measurements reduced in a uniform way. Also note that the surveys nicely complement each other: ENEAR galaxies probe high density regions and delineate large-scale structures more sharply; SFI galaxies probe lower density regimes and are more uniformly distributed across the sky. Another important point is that the peculiar velocities in these catalogs are measured using distinct distance estimators based on different observed quantities. Therefore, to take full advantage of these characteristics these samples have been analyzed separately, to test the reproducibility of the results, and combined into the SEcat catalog to produce a fair sample probing a wide range of density regimes. The results of analyses based on these new catalogs of peculiar velocity data are reviewed below and compared to those obtained using Mark III.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Reconstructed density and velocity fields

An underlying assumption of all methods used in estimating $`\beta `$ is that galaxies, even though biased, are fair tracers of the mass distribution. This hypothesis can be, in principle, directly tested by comparing the galaxy density field as derived from redshift surveys and the mass density field reconstructed from peculiar velocity data. POTENT, Wiener Filter and more recently the Unbiased Minimal Variance estimator (UMV) are examples of methods developed to reconstruct the three-dimensional velocity and density fields from the observed radial component of the peculiar velocity. All methods assume that on the scales of interest the perturbations are small and non-linear effects can be neglected. The various methods have also been extensively tested using mock catalogs drawn from simulations that mimic the nearby universe.

Recently, the UMV method has been applied to the SEcat catalog of peculiar velocities and to the PSCz redshift survey data. Figure 2 shows the map of the PSCz galaxy density field (left panel) and the mass density field (right panel) along the Supergalactic plane, the latter obtained from the SEcat data using a Gaussian smoothing radius of 1200 kms-1. The main features of our local universe are easily identified in these maps, including the Great Attractor (GA) on the left and the Perseus-Pisces supercluster (PP) in the lower right. There is also a hint of the Coma cluster, which lies just outside the volume probed by SEcat, in the upper part on the map. The similarity between the mass and galaxy density fields is striking, especially considering the limitations to the peculiar velocity data imposed by the Zone of Avoidance. Furthermore, even though different in details, the gross features of the mass density field are similar to those obtained by applying either the same or the POTENT formalism to the Mark III catalog and SFI catalogs. This is an outstanding result considering the different ways these catalogs were constructed and the peculiar velocities measured. Current results are also a remarkable improvement over those obtained from earlier catalogs. In particular, it is worth mentioning the prominence of the Perseus-Pisces region, completely absent in the earlier maps, and the well-defined voids, well-known features in redshift surveys which are now clearly seen in the reconstructed mass distribution.

The reconstructed three-dimensional velocity field can also be used to measure other quantities of interest. For instance, the amplitude of the bulk flow is found to vary from $`V_B=300\pm `$ 70 kms-1 for a sphere of $`R=20h{}_{}{}^{1}\mathrm{Mpc}`$ to $`160\pm `$ 60 kms-1 for $`R=60h{}_{}{}^{1}\mathrm{Mpc}`$. This value is in good agreement with that obtained from a direct fit to the radial peculiar velocities for the SFI and the ENEAR samples. This result disagrees with the bulk flow determined for the Mark III survey, which has an amplitude of roughly twice this value. The small amplitude of the bulk flow recently measured is in marked contrast to earlier claims of large amplitude coherent motions over scales of the order of 100$`h^1`$ Mpc, which at face value would imply excess power on very large scales. This result is in line with the results of recent redshift surveys which have not detected inhomogeneities on very large scales.

Greater insight on the characteristic of the flowfield can be obtained by decomposing the 3-D velocity field into two components, one which is induced by the local mass distribution and a tidal component due to mass fluctuations external to the volume considered. Figure 3 shows the results of this decomposition applied to the ENEAR survey, where the local volume is a sphere of $`80h{}_{}{}^{1}\mathrm{Mpc}`$ centered on the Local Group. The plots show the full velocity field (upper left panel), the divergent (upper right panel) and the tidal (lower left panel) components. To further understand the nature of the tidal field, its bulk velocity component has been subtracted and the residual is shown in the lower right panel. This residual is clearly dominated by a quadrupole component. In principle, the analysis of this residual field can shed light on the exterior mass distribution. For the ENEAR catalog we find that the local dynamics is hardly affected by structure on scales larger than its depth. For this sample not only the bulk velocity at large radii is small but so is the $`rms`$ value of the tidal field, estimated to be of the order of 60 kms-1. This is in marked contrast to the results obtained from the analysis of the Mark III survey which yields a much stronger tidal field, pointing (in the sense of its quadrupole moment) towards the Shapley concentration. For Mark III, the tidal field contributes $``$ 200 kms-1to the total bulk velocity.

### 4.2 Estimates of $`\beta `$

Equations (1) and (2) show that there are two alternative ways for estimating $`\beta `$ \- velocity-velocity or density-density comparisons. In the first case, the observed galaxy distribution is used to infer a mass density field from which peculiar velocities can be predicted and compared to the observed ones. In the second case, the three-dimensional velocity field is obtained from the observed radial velocities and used to infer a self-consistent mass density field and thus a galaxy distribution, via linear biasing. The latter is then compared to the one obtained from large all-sky redshift surveys.

A particularly useful method for performing a velocity-velocity comparison is the modal expansion method. This method expands the velocity fields by means of smooth functions (Bessel and spherical harmonics) defined in redshift space, thus alleviating the Malmquist biases inherent in real space analysis. Furthermore, the modal expansion smooths the observed and predicted velocities in the same way, so that the smoothed fields can be compared directly. Because the number of modes is substantially smaller than the number of data points, the method also provides the means of estimating $`\beta `$ from a likelihood analysis carried out on a mode-by-mode basis, instead of galaxy-by-galaxy. The similar smoothing and the mode-by-mode comparison substantially simplify the error analysis. The modal expansion method has been used in comparisons between the IRAS 1.2 Jy predicted velocities and observed velocities inferred from TF measurements in the Mark III catalog, yielding $`\beta _I`$ 0.4. However, examination of the residual field showed a strong dipole signature suggesting a significant mismatch between the Mark III and the IRAS fields. The reasons for the mismatch are still not well-understood.

More recently, the same method has been employed in the comparison of the IRAS 1.2 Jy and SFI and of the IRAS PSCz and ENEAR velocity fields. Figure 4 shows the smoothed velocity field predicted from the 1.2 Jy IRAS survey (left), adopting the best-fit value of $`\beta _I=0.6`$, and the measured SFI field (right). The infall to Virgo ($`l=284^{},b=74^{}`$) dominates the nearby SFI flow. In the middle panel, the field exhibits a dipole pattern corresponding to the reflex motion of the Local Group with infalling galaxies in the Hydra-Centaurus direction and an outward flow in the Perseus-Pisces direction, as seen in the LG restframe. Comparing the two fields one immediately sees that the general pattern of the velocity fields is remarkably similar with excellent agreement in the location of outflows and inflows and with only a few nearby galaxies having large residuals. This result gives confidence in the determination of $`\beta _I`$. Most encouraging is the absence of large regions of coherent residuals such as the dipole signature seen in the Mark III analysis at intermediate and distant redshift shells. Similar analysis has been performed using the PSCz IRAS survey and the ENEAR catalog of peculiar velocities. Figure 5 shows the corresponding smoothed velocity fields, for an adopted value of $`\beta _I=0.5`$. Comparison of the right-side of Figures 4 and 5 shows that the general flow pattern of the SFI and ENEAR velocity fields is remarkably similar. In the ENEAR case, very few prominent structures are probed by bright ellipticals in the innermost shell. However, in the next two shells a strong dipole pattern can be easily recognized, having an amplitude comparable to that observed in SFI. The agreement between the PSCz and ENEAR velocity fields is also very good with only a few more distant galaxies having large residuals.

The above results demonstrate that the velocity fields of both SFI and ENEAR are similar and well described by the gravity fields of the IRAS 1.2 Jy and PSCz surveys, yielding comparable values of $`\beta _I`$. Consistent values of $`\beta _I`$ have also been obtained from similar analysis of the SBF survey of galaxy distances ($`\beta _I=0.42`$) and from the peculiar velocities measured for a sample of nearby Type Ia supernovae ($`\beta _I=0.4`$) .

Another method to carry out a velocity-velocity comparison considered is VELMOD, a maximum likelihood method which takes as input the distance indicator observables and galaxy redshifts and determines the parameters describing the distance relation and the velocity model adopted. The method does not require smoothing and it is constructed for high-resolution analysis. The method has been used to analyze sub-samples of spiral galaxies extracted from the Mark III  and the SFI data, yielding $`\beta _I=0.49`$ and $`\beta _I=0.42`$, respectively. These results show that the value of $`\beta _I`$ obtained from velocity-velocity comparisons is independent not only of the data set considered but also of the method used, with all estimates being in the range $`0.4<\beta _I<0.6`$.

Unfortunately, until recently there has been a disparity between the results obtained from velocity-velocity comparisons and other methods such as density-density comparisons and maximum-likelihood estimates of the power-spectrum (PS) of mass fluctuations derived from peculiar velocity data . For instance, density-density comparisons using different data sets have invariably led to high values of $`\beta `$, consistent with unity. In particular, comparison of the IRAS 1.2 Jy and POTENT reconstructed density field, based on the Mark III catalog, yields $`\beta _I=0.89`$. Similarly, estimates based on the PS derived from peculiar velocity data using Mark III, SFI and ENEAR have yielded values of $`\beta `$ in the range 0.82-1.1. The nature of this discrepancy is unknown. Both density-density and velocity-velocity methods have been carefully tested using mock catalogs extracted from N-body simulations and have been shown to provide unbiased estimates of $`\beta `$. Possible reasons for the discrepancy are non-linear effects, scale dependence of the biasing, poorly understood errors and/or problems with the data. However, attempts to evaluate their impact have so far failed to explain the discrepancy. In general, velocity-velocity comparisons are considered more robust as they depend more on redshift data, while density-density comparisons uses less reliable peculiar velocity data.

Recently, a new attempt to carry out a density-density comparison has been made using the SEcat catalog mentioned earlier and the UMV method to reconstruct the 3-D velocity and density fields. These reconstructed fields were then used to determine the value of $`\beta `$ from direct velocity-velocity and density-density comparisons with the corresponding fields predicted from the PSCz redshift survey. Figure 6 shows the results of the density-density (left) and velocity-velocity (right) comparisons, which give $`\beta _I=0.56\pm 0.1`$ and $`\beta _I=0.51\pm 0.05`$, respectively. This result is remarkable since it is the first time a good agreement is found for $`\beta `$ values derived from these two methods. This encouraging new result, which apparently resolves a long-standing dispute, may be due either to the new method used in the reconstruction of the fields or to the more homogeneous peculiar velocity data used or a combination of both.

High values of $`\beta `$ have also been derived from applying a maximum-likelihood technique to the peculiar velocity data to derive the power-spectrum of mass density fluctuations. These results are summarized in Figure 7. In the left panel the PS obtained from the ENEAR sample with those measured for Mark III and SFI. The right panel shows the contour map of the likelihood (in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\eta _8`$ plane) for a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ model fit to the ENEAR data, where $`\eta _8=\sigma _8\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.6}`$ and $`\sigma _8`$ is the $`rms`$ fluctuation amplitude within a sphere of $`8h^1`$ Mpc radius. It is clear from the figure that all data sets lead to similar high-amplitude PS, equivalent to high values of $`\beta `$. From the figure one also can see that while the likelihood analysis poses a strong constraint on $`\eta _8`$, the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is poorly determined. Note, however, that low values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, such as those required from the analyses of redshift survey data ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }0.2`$), are excluded at about the $`3\sigma `$ level.

It is important to recall that the likelihood method used in estimating the PS involves the use of model power-spectra to compute the velocity correlation tensor which is then compared to that computed from the peculiar velocity data to determine the fit parameters. An equivalent way of exploring the same information is to use the scalar velocity correlation function, computed under the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic flow. The results of this analysis can then be compared directly to model predictions using linear theory and an ensemble average of cosmic flow realizations for different cosmological models. The statistics of the model velocity field is parameterized by the amplitude, $`\eta _8`$, and by the shape parameter, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, of a CDM–like power spectrum. Applying the velocity correlation statistics to the SFI and ENEAR data sets one finds $`\eta _8=0.34`$ (SFI) and $`\eta _8=0.51`$ (ENEAR) for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.25`$. These values translate to $`\beta _I=0.450.67`$, assuming $`b_I/b_o1.3`$, results which agree within the uncertainties with the lower values of $`\beta `$ obtained by other methods presented above. More importantly, in contrast to the PS analyses, the region of acceptable solutions comfortably overlaps with other constraints on $`\eta _8`$ derived from the $`rms`$ of cluster peculiar velocities and cluster abundances, and on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ as determined for the galaxy power spectrum. One possible explanation for the discrepancy between the results of the PS analysis and the velocity correlation statistics is the different way the errors in the distance measurements are taken into account. An important clue is the weak constraint imposed on the shape parameter by the PS analysis. This suggests that the available samples may not be sufficiently deep for this type of analysis, making the method insensitive to the effect that large scale power may have in inducing velocities on small scales.

## 5 Summary

After considerable effort on both the observational and theoretical fronts, one can state with some degree of confidence that the most controversial issues surrounding large-scale flows are being resolved. The availability of different methods and of data sets have enabled one to test the reproducibility of the results. Especially important has been the completion of modern, homogeneous, all-sky redshift-distance surveys of both spirals and early-type galaxies. These samples probe comparable volumes and allow for independent analyses. Contrary to earlier claims recent analyses yield a small amplitude bulk flow, a mass distribution and velocity field which closely resembles the galaxy density field and the associated gravity field and concordant values of $`\beta `$ obtained using different samples, distance indicators and methods. Current constraints argue in favor of a low-density universe and are consistent with those set by galaxy clustering, small-scale dynamics, present-day cluster abundance, high-redshift supernovae and cosmic microwave background. The agreement among such diverse measurements is not only reassuring but gratifying for those who have worked so hard in the field of cosmic flows.

Acknowledgements.  I would like to thank all of my collaborators in the SFI and ENEAR projects. Special thanks to S. Zaroubi for many useful discussions.


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# Heavy quark production at HERA in 𝒌_𝒕 factorization supplemented with CCFM evolution

## 1 Introduction

The calculation of inclusive quantities, like the structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$ at HERA, performed in NLO QCD is in perfect agreement with the measurements. But in exclusive quantities like jet or heavy quark production large so-called $`K`$-factors (normalization factors)  are needed to bring the NLO calculations close to the data.

At large energies (small $`x`$), the evolution of parton densities proceeds over a large region in rapidity $`\mathrm{\Delta }y\mathrm{log}(1/x)`$ and effects of finite transverse momenta of the partons may become increasingly important. Cross sections can then be $`k_t`$ \- factorized into an off-shell ($`k_t`$ dependent) partonic cross section $`\widehat{\sigma }(\frac{x}{z},k_t)`$ and a $`k_t`$ \- unintegrated parton density function $`(z,k_t)`$:

$$\sigma =\frac{dz}{z}d^2k_t\widehat{\sigma }(\frac{x}{z},k_t)(z,k_t)$$
(1)
The unintegrated gluon density $`(z,k_t)`$ is described by the BFKL evolution equation in the region of asymptotically large energies (small $`x`$). An appropriate description valid for both small and large $`x`$ is given by the CCFM evolution equation, resulting in an unintegrated gluon density $`𝒜(x,k_t,\overline{q})`$, which is a function also of the additional evolution scale $`\overline{q}`$.

Catani argues that by explicitly carrying out the $`k_t`$ integration in eq.(1) one can obtain a form fully consistent with collinear factorization: the coefficient functions and also the DGLAP splitting functions are no longer evaluated in fixed order perturbation theory but supplemented with the all-order resummation of the $`\alpha _\mathrm{s}\mathrm{log}1/x`$ contribution at small $`x`$. This all-loop resummation shows up in a so-called *non-Sudakov* form factor $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ns}`$ for CCFM.

In this paper the $`k_t`$ factorization approach is discussed with respect to resolved photon structure and next-to-leading corrections in the collinear approach. Then calculations for $`b\overline{b}`$ and inelastic $`J/\psi `$ production at HERA are presented, using the unintegrated gluon density obtained previously from a CCFM fit to the HERA structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$

## 2 $`𝒌_𝒕`$-factorization versus higher order processes in collinear factorization

The diagrams for LO, NLO and resolved photon processes in the collinear approach are shown schematically in Fig. 1. In collinear factorization, the incoming parton is on-mass-shell and has vanishing transverse momentum $`k_t`$, whereas in $`k_t`$-factorization the partons entering the hard scattering matrix element are free to be off-mass-shell. The advantage of the $`k_t`$-factorization approach becomes visible, when additional hard gluon radiation to a $`22`$ process like $`\gamma gQ\overline{Q}`$ is considered. If the transverse momentum $`p_{tg}`$ of the additional gluon is of the order of that of the quarks, then in the collinear approach the full $`𝒪(\alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)`$ matrix element for $`23`$ has to be calculated. In $`k_t`$-factorization such processes are naturally included, even if only the LO $`\alpha _\mathrm{s}`$ off-shell matrix element is used, since the $`k_t`$ of the incoming gluon is not restricted from above, and therefore can acquire a virtuality similar to the ones in a complete fixed order calculation. In Fig. 1 the basic ideas are shown schematically . Not only does $`k_t`$-factorization include (at least parts of) NLO diagrams, it also includes diagrams of the resolved photon type , with the natural transition from real to virtual photons.

The $`𝒪(\alpha _\mathrm{s})`$ matrix element in $`k_t`$-factorization includes the $`𝒪(\alpha _\mathrm{s})`$ matrix element of collinear factorization but in addition also higher order contributions because the incoming gluon is off-shell and the unintegrated gluon density resums parts of the virtual corrections (Fig. 3).

The unintegrated gluon density $`x𝒜(x,k_t^2,\overline{q})`$, was obtained in the framework of $`k_t`$ factorization using the CCFM evolution equation to fit the structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$. This gluon density $`x𝒜(x,k_t^2,\overline{q})`$ is used in the hadron level Monte Carlo generator Cascade for any comparison with measurements.

## 3 Heavy quark production at HERA

The prediction of Cascade for the total $`b\overline{b}`$ cross section was compared to the extrapolated measurements of the H1 and ZEUS experiments at HERA. Since Cascade generates full hadron-level events, a direct comparison with measurements can be done, before extrapolating the measurement over the full phase space to the total $`b\overline{b}`$ cross section. It has been shown, that the visible $`b\overline{b}`$ cross section as measured by the ZEUS experiment is in perfect agreement with the predictions from Cascade. However, large uncertainties come from the extrapolation of the measured cross section to the total $`b\overline{b}`$ cross section. If the extrapolation is performed with Cascade (or any other program of the Lund family), approximate agreement with the NLO prediction is also achieved in the case of the ZEUS measurement.

The prediction of Cascade has also been compared to the measurement of H1, where it was also shown that the experimental results from H1 and ZEUS are different by a factor $`2`$. It has been checked, that the difference between the experiments is not due to different kinematics.

In Fig. 4 the differential cross section of $`\mu `$’s coming from $`b`$-quark decays as measured by ZEUS is compared with the prediction of Cascade. Again good agreement is observed, except in the region of large $`\eta ^\mu `$. However this region is dominated by large $`x_g\text{ }>0.03`$ (see Fig. 3), where the application of $`k_t`$-factorization is questionable and also where the unintegrated gluon density is not at all constrained by the fit to $`F_2`$.

The cross section for $`\gamma pJ/\psi +X`$ as a function of the transverse momentum of the $`J/\psi `$ shows a significant deviation from the leading order color singlet model prediction (as implemented in Epjpsi ) in collinear factorization. In Fig. 5, the preliminary H1 measurement is compared to the prediction of Epjpsi . In collinear factorization, the harder transverse momentum spectrum is interpreted as a signal for significant next-to-leading order corrections. Also shown in Fig. 5$`a`$ is the prediction of Cascade using the same CCFM unintegrated gluon density as before together with the $`k_t`$-factorized matrix element for $`\gamma g^{}J/\psi g`$. The inelastic $`J/\psi `$ photoproduction cross section ($`z<0.9`$) as a function of $`p_T`$ is nicely described by Cascade. Especially the large transverse momentum part is explained as additional hard initial state QCD radiation. The same is also observed in full NLO calculations, and it shows again the advantage of the $`k_t`$-factorization in simulating a large part of the NLO correction of the collinear approach, due to the non zero virtuality of the incoming gluon. The distribution in the fractional momentum $`z`$ of the $`J/\psi `$ is also reasonably well described (Fig. 5$`b`$).

## 4 Conclusion

The application of the $`k_t`$-factorization approach to heavy quark production at HERA has been discussed. It is shown, that the visible $`b\overline{b}`$ production cross section as measured at ZEUS is nicely reproduced by Cascade, using the CCFM evolved unintegrated gluon density obtained from a fit to $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$. It was pointed out, that the extrapolation from the measured to the total $`b\overline{b}`$ cross section contains large model dependencies.

The differential cross sections for inelastic $`J/\psi `$ photoproduction can be reasonably well described with Cascade, both in terms of shape and normalization. The large transverse momentum tail is a direct signal for additional hard initial state QCD radiation.

It is the advantage of the $`k_t`$-factorization approach that important parts of NLO and even NNLO contributions are consistently included due to the off-shell gluons, which enter into the hard scattering process.

## Acknowledgments

I want to thank the organizers M. Kienzle and M. Wadhwa for this very nice workshop. I am also grateful to S. Frixione for the invitation to this workshop and his interest in $`k_t`$-factorization. Many thanks also go to S. Baranov and N. Zotov for interesting discussions and our fruitful collaboration. I am also grateful to L. Gladilin, B. Naroska and J. Whitmore for careful reading of the manuscript. All thanks for the great times with Antje.


text:
# COLO-HEP-477October 2001 The Static Potential with Hypercubic Blocking

## 1 Introduction

Recently  Hasenfratz and Knechtli introduced the hypercubic blocking transformation (HYP) and used it to study dynamical staggered fermions with greatly improved flavor symmetry. Here we use the HYP blocking as an operator to measure the static potential from Wilson loops. The HYP smearing mixes gauge links within hypercubes attached to the original link only, therefore it has less impact on the short-distance properties of the gauge configurations than repeated levels of APE blocking. The statistical accuracy of the potential measured with HYP links improves by about *an order of magnitude*.

We calculated the lowest order perturbative expansion of the lattice Coulomb potential of HYP links. The distortion effect of the smearing is visible at distances $`r/a2`$ but is negligible beyond that. By removing lattice artifacts using the perturbative Coulomb potential we could fit the static potential with the continuum form even from distance $`r/a1`$ with low $`\chi ^2`$. This, combined with the improved statistical accuracy at large distances makes it possible to get reliable values for both $`r_0`$ and $`\sqrt{\sigma }`$ even with limited statistics.

## 2 Constructing the HYP link

A single level of HYP smearing consists of three levels of modified APE smearing, where the staples are restricted in such a way that only links within hypercubes attached to the original link are used. The construction equations can be found in . There are three free APE-blocking parameters $`\alpha _i`$ ($`i=1\mathrm{}3`$). These were optimized *non-perturbatively* to suppress fluctuations at the plaquette level. The *perturbative* cancellation of the flavor symmetry violating terms at tree level of the staggered HYP action gives consistent values for the blocking parameters .

The figure shows a schematic representation of the construction in 3D: The fat link is built from the four double-lined staples (there are six in 4D) (a), which in turn are constructed from the two

## 3 Perturbative potential

Let the gauge fields for the thin links be $`A_\mu (x)`$ and those for the HYP links $`B_\mu (x)`$. In Fourier space they are related as:

$`B_\mu \left(p\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\nu }{}}h_{\mu \nu }\left(p\right)A_\nu \left(p\right)+𝒪\left(A^2\right),\text{where}`$
$`h_{\mu \nu }\left(p\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _{\mu \nu }\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _1}{6}}{\displaystyle \underset{\rho }{}}\widehat{p}_\rho ^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \rho }\left(p\right)\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _1}{6}}\widehat{p}_\mu \widehat{p}_\nu \mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }\left(p\right),`$
$`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }\left(p\right)`$ $`=`$ $`1+\alpha _2\left(1+\alpha _3\right){\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _2}{4}}\left(1+2\alpha _3\right)\left(\widehat{p}^2\widehat{p}_\mu ^2\widehat{p}_\nu ^2\right)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _2\alpha _3}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{\eta \mu ,\nu }{}}\widehat{p}_\eta ^2`$
$`\text{and}\widehat{p}_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{sin}\left(p_\mu /2\right)`$
Using this relation one can calculate the Coulomb part of the static quark potential measured with HYP links in lowest order perturbation theory. For a Wilson loop made from HYP links with a spatial extension $`a𝐧`$ the potential is:

$$aV_{pert}\left(a𝐧\right)=\frac{4}{3}g^2_\pi ^\pi \frac{\mathrm{d}^3p}{\left(2\pi \right)^3}\frac{\mathrm{cos}\left(𝐧𝐩\right)\times [\begin{array}{c}\text{smearing}\\ \text{factor}\end{array}]}{_{i=1}^3\widehat{p}_i^2}$$

where: \[smearing factor\]=

$`\{\begin{array}{cc}\left[1\frac{\alpha _1}{6}_{i=1}^3\widehat{p}_i^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{i0}\right]^2& \text{for the HYP potential}\hfill \\ 1& \text{for the thin potential}\hfill \end{array}`$
Here we use the Wilson plaquette gauge action. The generalization to other gauge actions modifies the propagator in the above formula.

## 4 Potential measurements

The improvement in statistics due to the HYP smearing is best seen by comparing the static quark potential measured from Wilson loops using thin and HYP links on the *same configurations*. The set consists of 240 $`8^3\times 24`$ configurations generated with the Wilson plaquette action at $`\beta =5.7`$. The thin link potential has been shifted by an unphysical constant to match the HYP potential for $`r/a>2.5`$:

For distances $`r/a\sqrt{2}`$ the HYP and thin potential agree well and for larger distances the statistical error in the HYP potential is extremely reduced by the smearing transformation. This is especially important for a precise measurement of the string tension. The solid line is a perturbatively improved fit that will be discussed in the following section.

## 5 Improved fit

The deviation of $`V_{pert}`$ from the continuum Coulomb potential $`V_C(r)=\frac{g^2}{3\pi r}`$ is best seen in an $`r`$ vs. $`rV`$ plot:

The perturbative calculation captures the short distance distortion of the HYP smearing and the improved rotational symmetry for larger distances.

With this perturbative data one can make a four parameter fit to the lattice data. If we assume that most of the lattice artifacts are captured by $`V_{pert}`$ we can write $`V_{lat}`$ as

$`V_{lat}`$ $`=`$ $`V_{cont}+\mathrm{\Delta }V_{lat}\text{where}`$
$`V_{cont}(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_0}{r}}+c_1+c_2r`$
is the continuum potential and
$`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{lat}(r)`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{c}_0\left(V_{pert}(r)V_C(r)\right)`$
represents the lattice artifacts.
$`\stackrel{~}{c}_0,c_0,c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ are the four parameters of the improved fit and from $`c_0`$ and $`c_2`$ the string tension $`\sigma `$ and Sommer scale $`r_0`$ can be obtained in the usual way.

## 6 Results from the improved fit

For both thin and HYP potentials the following plot shows the actual potential data and the ”corrected” data, where the lowest order lattice correction is removed, namely: $`V_{lat}\mathrm{\Delta }V_{lat}`$. The continuum part of the fit, $`V_{cont}`$, is shown as a solid line. The fit uses all data points in the range $`r/a(0.9,5)`$:

After removing the lattice artifacts and adjusting an overall constant the thin and HYP measurements match very closely.

The perturbatively corrected potential shows very good rotational symmetry and closely follows the continuum form over the whole range of $`r/a`$. The $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom decreases by about a factor of 10 if we include the perturbative correction in the fit. The correction of the lattice artifacts is so effective that one can use all the points, even $`r/a=1`$, for fitting. As an example the following plot shows the dependence of $`\sqrt{\sigma }`$ on the lower limit of the fit ($`r_{min}`$):

The results for the potential parameters of the $`\beta =5.7`$ quenched lattices from standard jackknife analysis are (together with data from some large scale simulations at the same coupling value):

| $`𝐫_\mathrm{𝟎}/𝐚`$ | $`𝐚\sqrt{\sigma }`$ | $`N_{conf}`$ | type of link |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathbf{2.93}\left(\mathrm{𝟐}\right)`$ | $`\mathbf{0.398}\left(\mathrm{𝟖}\right)`$ | 240 | HYP |
| $`2.922\left(9\right)`$ | - | 1000 | multi-hit  |
| $`2.990\left(24\right)`$ | $`0.3879\left(34\right)`$ | 4000 | thin  |

## 7 Summary

We have measured the static potential using HYP smeared links.

* The HYP potential has greatly reduced statistical errors and shows improved rotational symmetry.
* The short distance potential is distorted
only at $`r/a<2`$.
* The perturbative HYP Coulomb potential describes most of these distortions.
* With the perturbative correction potential data even at $`r/a<2`$ can be used for fitting.

The improved statistical accuracy and the perturbative correction make the HYP potential measurement very effective for the analysis of both quenched and dynamical configurations. We would like to emphasize that at present other refined techniques, like multi-hit  or multi-level , are not applicable with dynamical fermions in contrast to the HYP smearing, with which we were able to obtain reliable scale determinations on dynamical lattices even with limited statistics.


text:
# Velocity Fluctuations in Electrostatically Driven Granular Media

\[

## Abstract

We study experimentally the particle velocity fluctuations in an electrostatically driven dilute granular gas. The velocity distribution functions have strong deviations from Maxwellian form in a wide range of parameters. We have found that the tails of the distribution functions are consistent with a stretched exponential law with typical exponents of the order $`3/2`$. Molecular dynamic simulations shows qualitative agreement with experimental data. Our results suggest that this non-Gaussian behavior is typical for most inelastic gases with both short and long range interactions.

\]

Despite extensive study over the preceding decade, a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of granular materials still poses a challenge for physicists and engineers . Driven granular materials exhibit complex behavior that resemble some aspects of conventional solids, liquids, and gases, yet also demonstrate some considerable differences.

Recent experimental studies with vibrationally–driven granular gases revealed surprising deviations in the particle distribution function from the Maxwell distribution law . These deviations were attributed to the effects of dissipation due to inelasticity of inter-particle collisions. In particular, Ref.  reported an “universal” stretched exponential law

$$P(v)\mathrm{exp}[|v/v_0|^\zeta ]$$
(1)
with the exponent $`\zeta =3/2`$. Here $`v`$ is particle velocity, $`P`$ is the velocity distribution function and $`v_0`$ is the “thermal velocity”. This behavior was observed in a wide range of frequencies and amplitudes of vibration and for different densities of the granular gas and agrees with the theoretical prediction of Ref. . Deviations from Maxwellian behavior also has been observed experimentally in different geometries and for different driving conditions in Refs.  and in numerical simulations . These studies suggest that the deviations from a Maxwell distribution are the result of short-range inelastic hard-core collisions between particles.

Interactions between particles often are not reduced to simple hard-core collisions. Fascinating collective behavior appears when small particles acquire an electric charge and respond to competing long-range electromagnetic and short range contact forces. An important question is whether non-Maxwellian distributions are typical only for granular gases with hard-core collisions or could it also be observed for general dissipative gases with both short-range and long-range interactions.

The electrostatic excitation of granular media offers unique new opportunities compared to traditional vibration techniques which have been developed to explore granular dynamics. It enables one to deal with extremely fine powders which are not easily controlled by mechanical methods. Electrostatic driving makes use of these bulk forces, and allows control of the ratio between long-range electric forces and short-range collisions by changing the amplitude and the frequency of the applied electric field. Our previous studies with electrostatically-driven granular media revealed a hysteretic phase transition from the immobile condensed state (granular solid) to a fluidized dilated state (granular gas) with a changing applied electric field . A spontaneous precipitation of dense clusters from the gas phase and a subsequent coarsening – coagulation of these clusters – is observed in a certain region of the electric field values. The strong effect of humidity on dynamics of electrostatically-driven granular materials was studied in Ref. .

In this Letter we study the particle velocity distributions in electrostatically driven granular media. We have found that in a wide range of parameters the particle velocity distribution function is strongly non-Maxwellian and is well-approximated by the stretched exponential law $`P(v)\mathrm{exp}(|v/v_0|^{3/2})`$. We performed molecular dynamics simulations of conducting particles in an ac electric field and have obtained qualitative agreement with the experiment. We conclude from our results that the tails of the velocity distributions for driven granular gases in general exhibit non-Maxwellian behavior and are not limited to the systems with just hard-core collisions.

Our experimental setup is similar to that in Ref. . Particles are placed between the plates of a large capacitor which is energized by a constant (dc) or alternating (ac) electric field $`E=E_0\mathrm{cos}(\omega t)`$, see Fig. 1. To provide optical access to the cell, the capacitor plates were made of glass with a clear conductive coating. We used $`11\times 11`$ cm capacitor plates with a spacing of 1.5 mm. The particles consisted of 165 $`\mu m`$ conducting bronze spheres. The field amplitude $`E_0`$ varied from 0 to 10 kV/cm and the frequencies $`f=\omega /2\pi `$ on the interval of 0 to 120 Hz. The total number of particles in the cell varied between $`10^5`$ and $`10^6`$.

Conducting particles acquire a surface charge when they are in contact with the capacitor plate. As the magnitude of the electric field in the capacitor exceeds a critical value, $`E_1`$, the upward electric force overcomes gravity $`mg`$ ($`m`$ is the mass of the particle, $`g`$ is the gravity) and lifts the charged particles. When grains hit the upper plate, they deposit their charge and fall back. By applying an alternating electric field $`E=E_0\mathrm{sin}(2\pi t)`$, and adjusting its frequency $`f`$, one can control the vertical excursion of particles by effectively turning them back before they collide with the upper plate. Thus, by increasing the frequency of the electric field, the particles can be confined in a relatively thin layer, i.e. the granular gas is quasi-two-dimensional at high frequencies and three-dimensional at low frequencies. It effectively allows for control over the number of collisions and, therefore, the contributions from long-range and short-range interactions. This control over the vertical extent of the motion of the particles also changes the manner in which energy is transferred from the vertical to the horizontal through collisions. From the comparison of typical kinetic energy acquired by the particle and electric energy of inter-particle interaction it is possible to show that the long-range electric interaction becomes dominant with respect to short-range collisions at the frequencies larger than $`f_0100`$ Hz for given particle size.

In our experiment we extracted horizontal particles velocities via high-speed image analysis. Pictures were obtained at the rate 1000 frames per second from a camera mounted to a microscope suspended vertically above the cell and particles positions were resolved to sub-pixel resolution. Inter-particle and particle-boundary collisions that introduce sudden changes in momenta of the particles were filtered from the distributions in a manner similar to Ref . These events were only a small fraction of the total number of measurements due to the low density at which they were acquired. An ensemble average for each of the velocity distributions were obtained with nearly $`10^6`$ data points.

The effect of long-range electric forces is illustrated in Fig. 2. In contrast to vibrationally-driven systems, the momentum transfer occurs often without actual collision. While there are hard sphere collisions in the system as well, this interaction occurs at a center to center distance of approximately two particle diameters.

A summary of experimental results is presented in Figs. 3 and 4. We find for various values of frequency $`f`$ and electric field amplitude $`E_0`$ the normalized velocity distributions both in logarithmic and linear scales lay practically on a top of each other, see Fig. 3. There is a very small difference in granular temperature $`T_g`$ between $`x`$ and $`y`$ directions, which is probably related to some small tilt of the cell with respect to gravity. There is an increase in the flatness of the velocity distributions, $`F=v^4/v^2^23`$, as the driving frequency is decreased at a fixed driving amplitude, see Fig. 4,inset. (As defined here, a flatness of 0 corresponds to a Gaussian distribution). In a mechanically shaken granular layer, an increase in flatness was observed as the shaking amplitude was decreased at constant frequency, which corresponded to a lower horizontal granular temperature . In the electrostatically driven system, the increase in flatness occurs as the horizontal granular temperature increases as there is more kinetic energy to transfer from the horizontal to the vertical direction because of the increase in vertical excursion at lower frequencies.

Fig. 4 shows the density distribution function $`g(r)=\rho (r)/\rho (0)/\rho ^2`$ for different values of frequency. The volume density for the experimental conditions is extremely dilute ($`7\%`$) as can be seen by the lack of particle correlations with the exception of the excluded volume of the finite particles. Consequently, the function $`g(r)`$ has almost step-like form for low frequencies. One can also see that with the increase of frequency the contribution from long-range interactions also increases. This fact is manifested in the smearing of the step-like structure of $`g(r)`$, which can be interpreted as an increase of the effective crossection for particle interactions.

In order to obtain an insight into the problem we performed molecular dynamics simulations of conducting particles in an applied ac electric field. We modified the MD code used in our earlier paper . In particular, we introduced a finite roughness of the bottom plate and finite restitution coefficient $`r`$ between the particles and particles and walls ($`r=0.8`$ and $`r=0.6`$ correspondingly) . We changed the restitution coefficient and roughness over a wide range, but the results appear to be very robust to the specific choice of $`r`$. We simulated up to 1000 particles in the cell $`80\times 80`$ particles diameters in $`xy`$ plane, electric field amplitude $`E_0`$ was $`2.6E_1`$, where $`E_1`$ is the first critical field value (for $`E=E_1`$ upward eclectic force acting on isolated particle overcomes gravity, see ). The velocity is scaled by $`\overline{v}=\sqrt{ga}`$ and time by $`\overline{t}=\sqrt{a/g}`$, where $`a`$ is the radius of particle. Typical simulation time was 10,000 $`\overline{t}`$, and the velocity distribution was built from 2,500,000 sample points.

Selected results are presented in Fig. 5. In the wide range of parameters $`\omega `$, $`E_0`$ we have found non-Maxwellian velocity distributions. For relatively high frequencies $`\omega =0.5`$ (corresponding approximately to $`f=30`$ Hz for our experimental parameters) the velocity distribution is indeed approximated by Eq. (1) with $`\zeta `$ close to $`3/2`$, as in the experiment. For a smaller frequency ($`\omega =0.2`$) we have found that $`P(v)`$ is consistent with a simple exponential law: $`P(v)\mathrm{exp}(v/v_0)`$, i.e. $`\zeta =1`$. It is plausible that the crossover to exponent $`\zeta =3/2`$ occurs for the high velocity tail and would explain the gentle increase in flatness as the frequency is reduced. However, one likely needs substantially longer simulations in order to resolve this crossover.

Our simulation results for “high frequency” yield an exponent $`\zeta 1.5`$ and are in a good agreement with experiment. Unfortunately, we cannot verify the “low frequency” exponent $`\zeta =1`$ because our current experimental apparatus does not allow us to extract reliable particles positions for the frequencies $`f`$ below $`30`$ Hz. For small frequencies the vertical particle displacements are much higher than the particle size. As a result, the particles go out of the focal plane of the microscope and it is impossible to sufficiently resolve horizontal positions.

Let us briefly discuss the results. Universal high velocity tails of the distribution $`P\mathrm{exp}(|v/v_0|^{3/2})`$ were derived by van Noije and Ernst  from the Enskog-Boltzmann equation for the uniformly heated state of a 2D weakly-inelastic granular gas. According to , in the steady state, the averaged distribution function satisfies the equation

$$D_v^2P=I(P,P)$$
(2)
where $`I(P,P)`$ is the pair collision integral and $`D`$ is proportional to the strength of external “thermal noise”. In the large velocity limit Ref.  derived $`I(P,P)vP`$ since the fast particle typically collides with particles in the “thermal range”, which immediately results in Eq. (1) for the high velocity tail.

Although there is no “thermal noise” in our experiment, multiple collisions between particles, the finite roughness of the plates, and long-range interactions result in sufficient randomization of particle velocities and presumably have an overall effect similar to thermal noise. The argument that the collision integral for high velocities is reduced to $`vP`$ appears to be very robust and does not depend on the specifics of the model. Thus, we can expect the above stretched exponential velocity tails to be characteristic of our system as well.

The distribution $`P\mathrm{exp}(v/v_0)`$ was derived for a freely evolving granular gas . One can speculate that our results for the small frequency have some fingerprints of a “freely evolving gas” because the particles spend significant time in the flights between plates and exhibit some sort of “free cooling”, whereas for the higher frequencies the particles are confined in a thin layer and collisions with the bottom plate occur more often.

In conclusion, we experimentally and numerically studied particle velocity distributions in an electrostatically driven granular media. We have found that in a wide range of experimental parameters the particle velocity distribution function is strongly non-Maxwellian and is well-approximated by the stretched exponential law $`P(v)\mathrm{exp}(|v/v_0|^{3/2})`$. Our results suggest that such velocity distributions should be generic for dissipative gases with both short and long range interactions and may possibly have some relevance for completely different systems, such as dusty plasmas, colloids, etc.

We thank B. Meerson for valuable comments. This research was supported by the US DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, contract W-31-109-ENG-38. JSO would like to acknowledge the donors of the Petroleum Research Fund, administered by the ACS, for partial support of this research as well as the support of the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EPS-9874732 and matching support from the State of Kansas.