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# High precision measurement of the static dipole polarizability of cesium

Also at \]Physics Department, University California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720.

## Abstract

The cesium $`6^2S_{1/2}`$ scalar dipole polarizability $`\alpha _0`$ has been determined from the time-of-flight of laser cooled and launched cesium atoms traveling through an electric field. We find $`\alpha _0=6.611\pm 0.009\times 10^{39}\text{Cm}^2/\text{V}=59.42\pm 0.08\times 10^{24}\text{cm}^3=401.0\pm 0.6a_0^3`$. The 0.14% uncertainty is a factor of fourteen improvement over the previous measurement. Values for the $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ lifetimes and the $`6^2S_{1/2}`$ cesium-cesium dispersion coefficient $`C_6`$ are determined from $`\alpha _0`$ using the procedure of Derevianko and Porsev \[Phys. Rev. A 65, 053403 (2002)\].

preprint: LBNL-52051

The static polarizability quantifies the effect of one of the simplest perturbations to an atom: the application of a static electric field inducing a dipole moment Miller and Bederson (1977); See, for example, M. D. Bonin and Kresin (1997). With increasing atomic number, relativistic effects Kellö and Sadlej (1993); Lim et al. (1999) and core electron contributions Derevianko et al. (1999); Zhou and Norcross (1989) to the alkali polarizabilities become increasingly significant. In cesium, the heaviest stable alkali, the relativistic effects reduce the polarizability by 16% and the core contributes 4%. However, experimental uncertainties have made the measurements of the alkali polarizabilities relatively insensitive to the smaller core contribution, as shown in Fig 1. With the largest relativistic correction and core contribution of the stable alkali atoms, the cesium polarizability is an ideal benchmark for testing the theoretical treatment of both relativistic effects and core contributions. Our measurement advances the accuracy of the cesium polarizability by a factor of fourteen over the previous measurement Molof et al. (1974) and places the uncertainty at 4% of the core contribution.

To our measurement’s level of accuracy, the hyperfine levels of the cesium ground state have a common polarizability $`\alpha _0`$. From angular momentum relations Angel and Sandars (1968), the dependencies of the polarizability on the hyperfine level $`F`$ and on the magnetic sublevel $`M_F`$ are greatly suppressed in the cesium ground state. The small remaining dependencies, generated by the hyperfine interaction, have been measured in Refs. Gould et al. (1969); Ospelkaus et al. (2003); Simon et al. (1998).

For a static electric field $`E`$ of moderate strength, the potential energy $`W`$ of a neutral cesium atom in that field may be written in terms of $`\alpha _0`$ as $`W=(1/2)\alpha _0E^2`$. All odd terms in $`E`$ are disallowed by parity conservation and the linear term, also forbidden by time-reversal invariance, is experimentally known to be less than $`1.6\times 10^{44}`$ C-m in cesium Murthy et al. (1989). The hyperpolarizability contribution, which scales as $`E^4`$, has been calculated Fuentealba and Reyes (1993); Pal’chikov and Domnin (2000) and is negligible at the fields used for our measurement.

Prior to the interferometric measurement of Ekstrom et. al. Ekstrom et al. (1995), the most accurate determinations of the alkali polarizabilities Hall and Zorn (1974); Molof et al. (1974) had been made by measuring the deflection of a thermal beam due to a transverse electric field gradient. The gradient generates a force $`𝐅=W=\alpha _0EE`$ where $`E`$ is the magnitude of the electric field. The high velocity of a thermal beam results in a short interaction time and, consequently, a small deflection.

For cesium, we have measured instead the effect of an electric field gradient on the longitudinal velocity of a slow beam ($`<2`$ m/s) of neutral cesium atoms afforded by an optically launched atomic fountain. Upon entering an electric field from a region of zero field, the kinetic energy of the atoms gain energy by the amount $`W`$, producing a noticeable increase in the atoms’ velocity for even moderate electric fields. Because the force is conservative, the final velocity is dependent on only the final magnitude of the electric field and not on the details of the gradient in the region of transition from zero field.

In our measurement, cesium atoms are launched vertically from a magneto optic trap (MOT) such that the atoms reach their zenith between a set of parallel electric field plates (Fig. 2). When the electric field is turned on, the neutral cesium atoms accelerate into the plates with a resulting higher trajectory and a correspondingly longer flight time (Fig. 3). The kinetic energy boost afforded the atoms by the electric field is then determined from the increase in round trip time.

The atoms are detected by laser-induced fluorescence just before they enter the electric field plates and again when they fall back out. The intensity of the fluorescence is recorded against time as a measure of the cesium packet density profile. The height of the laser probe was determined to within 0.1 mm with respect to the field plates using reference features fixed to the electric field plate assembly and surveyed as part of the measurement of the electric field plate gap as discussed below. Because the laser fluorescence is destructive, the laser beam was shuttered to allow detection of the atoms either when they are rising or when they are falling.

The electric field plates were machined from aluminum with the high-field surfaces tungsten-coated for sputter resistance. The gap between the electric field plates (3.979 mm average) was measured to a precision of $`\pm 1\mu `$m (dominated by shot noise) along its length and width by profiling the interior surfaces with a 5-axis coordinate measuring machine (Fanamation model 606040). A calibration correction of $`10.9\pm 0.3\mu `$m was determined by profiling a set of precision gaps constructed of sandwiched gauge blocks. Variations of 4 $`\mu `$m across the width of the plates were averaged with a weighting factor favoring the midline of the plates, where the atoms spend the greatest portion of the round trip. The resulting electric fields were calculated for the full length of the plates using a two-dimensional finite-element code. The voltages applied to the electric field plates were continuously measured by two NIST-traceable voltage dividers (Ross model VD30-8.3-BD-LD-A) and a load matched multimeter (HP3457A).

A single measurement of the polarizability consisted of recording the intensity versus time of the fluorescence signals from two rising and two falling cesium atom packets in zero electric field, followed by five falling packets with the electric field on. The polarizability required to generate the delay in the falling cesium packet with the electric field on was determined by integrating the equations of motion over the path of the packet. The local value for gravity ($`979.92\pm 0.03`$ cm/s2) was interpolated from the local gravity measurements in Ref. Ponce .

The resulting polarizabilities were corrected for the longitudinal velocity spread of the cesium packet. To minimize this correction, we used a version of the pulsed electric-field technique presented in Ref. Maddi et al. (1999) to reduce the longitudinal velocity spread of the cesium packet shortly after launch from 3.2 cm/s RMS to 0.8 cm/s. The reduction in the velocity spread also serves to decrease the time width of the fluorescence signal when detecting the cesium packet and consequently increase our time resolution. The corrections for the velocity width are field dependent and are shown in Fig. 4. The average correction is -0.07%.

Non-uniform losses across the longitudinal width of the packet distort the shape of the fluorescence signal. Numerical evolution of the longitudinal and transverse phase-space of the packet through the apparatus, taking into account sources of defocusing and clipping, generated the non-uniform loss corrections to the polarizability shown in Fig. 4. The average correction was -0.05%.

The data, totaling 105 measurements of $`\alpha _0`$, were taken in three runs and over electric fields of 3 MV/m to 8 MV/m (Fig. 5). The final result is $`\alpha _0(\text{Cs})=6.611\pm 0.009\times 10^{39}\text{Cm}^2/\text{V}=59.42\pm 0.08\times 10^{24}\text{cm}^3=401.0\pm 0.6a_0^3`$. The error budget is summarized in Table 1. Our value for the polarizability is plotted in Fig. 6 along with those from previous measurements and from recent calculations.

The recent calculation of $`\alpha _0`$ and the cesium $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ lifetimes from the dispersion coefficient $`C_6`$ by Derevianko and Porsev Derevianko and Porsev (2002) demonstrates the intimate connection between these quantities. Reversing their procedure, we extract from our value of $`\alpha _0`$ the contribution of the $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ states to the ground state polarizability. These two states account for 96% of $`\alpha _0`$. With the ratio of dipole matrix elements measured in Ref. Rafac and Tanner (1998), we obtain the absolute value of the $`6^2S_{1/2}`$ to $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2S_{1/2}`$ to $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ reduced dipole matrix elements $`|D_{1/2}|=(3.824\pm 0.003\pm 0.001)\times 10^{29}\text{C\hspace{0.17em}m}=4.510\pm 0.004\pm 0.001\text{a.u.}`$ and $`|D_{3/2}|=(5.381\pm 0.004\pm 0.001)\times 10^{29}\text{C\hspace{0.17em}m}=6.347\pm 0.005\pm 0.002\text{a.u.}`$, respectively, where the reduced dipole matrix elements are defined according to the Wigner-Eckart theorem formulated with 3-J symbols Drake (1996). The definitions for atomic units (a.u.) are given in Ref. Drake (1996). The values listed here have their uncertainties separated into two portions that are displayed in the form $`\pm \sigma _1\pm \sigma _2`$ where $`\sigma _1`$ is the contribution from the uncertainty in our value of $`\alpha _0`$ and $`\sigma _2`$ is the contribution from those values provided by Ref. Derevianko and Porsev (2002). The total uncertainty is the sum of these two values in quadrature. From the reduced dipole matrix elements, we obtain lifetimes Derevianko and Porsev (2002); Sakurai (1967) for the $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ states of $`34.72\pm 0.06\pm 0.02\text{ns}`$ and $`30.32\pm 0.05\pm 0.02\text{ns}`$, respectively. Using the relation between $`D_{1/2}`$ and $`C_6`$ given by Derevianko and Porsev, we obtain $`C_6=(6.584\pm 0.020\pm 0.012)\times 10^{76}\text{J\hspace{0.17em}m}^6=6877\pm 21\pm 12\text{a.u.}`$. Our values are compared with other determinations of the $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ lifetimes in Table 2 and of $`C_6`$ in Fig. 7. Our values for the lifetimes agree with the calculation of Ref. Derevianko and Porsev (2002) and the measurements of Refs. Young et al. (1994); Rafac et al. (1994) but differ from the values given in Refs. Amiot et al. (2002); Rafac et al. (1999).

In conclusion, from the change in the time-of-flight of a fountain of neutral Cs atoms passing through a uniform electric field, we have determined the static scalar dipole polarizability of the cesium $`6^2S_{1/2}`$ ground state to an uncertainty of 0.14%. This is sufficient to test high precision calculations that include core electron contributions. From our polarizability result, we have derived the lifetimes of the cesium $`6^2P_{1/2}`$ and $`6^2P_{3/2}`$ states and the cesium-cesium dispersion coefficient $`C_6`$.

We thank Timothy Page, Daniel Schwan, Xinghua Lu, and Xingcan Dai for their assistance in the construction and assembly of the experiment, Robert Connors for his help in profiling the electric field plates, and Timothy P. Dinneen for his development of the prototype of this fountain apparatus. This work was supported by the Office of Biological and Physical Research, Physical Sciences Research Division, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and in its early stages by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. One of us (JA) acknowledges support from the NSF and from NASA.


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# Scaling properties of proton and anti-proton production in √𝑠_{𝑁𝑁}=200 GeV Au+Au collisions

PHENIX Collaboration

## Abstract

We report on the yield of protons and anti-protons, as a function of centrality and transverse momentum, in Au$`+`$Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}`$ = 200 GeV measured at mid-rapidity by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. In central collisions at intermediate transverse momenta ($`1.5<p_{}<4.5`$ GeV/$`c`$) a significant fraction of all produced particles are protons and anti-protons. They show a centrality-scaling behavior different from that of pions. The $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ and $`p/\pi `$ ratios are enhanced compared to peripheral Au+Au, p+p and $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions. This enhancement is limited to $`p_{}<5`$ GeV/$`c`$ as deduced from the ratio of charged hadrons to $`\pi ^0`$ measured in the range $`1.5<p_{}<9`$ GeV/$`c`$.

Heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies permit the study of nuclear matter at extreme energy densities. Hadrons originating from fragmentation of partons that have undergone large momentum transfer (hard) scatterings are sensitive probes of the hottest and densest stage of the collision. Data collected during the first RHIC run at$`\sqrt{s_{NN}}`$ = 130 GeV led to the discovery of suppression of high transverse momentum ($`p_{}2`$ GeV/$`c`$) hadron production in central Au$`+`$Au collisions ppg003 ; ppg013 ; star\_suppr  when compared to expectations from nucleon-nucleon collisions. This effect, quantified in terms of a nuclear modification factor $`R_{\mathrm{AA}}=\left(yield_{\mathrm{AA}}/N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}\right)/yield_{pp}`$, where $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ is the average number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions, had been discussed as a possible consequence of the energy loss suffered by partons moving in a dense medium quench\_effect ; quenching\_theory . Unexpectedly, it was found that $`R_{\mathrm{AA}}`$ is more strongly suppressed for $`\pi ^0`$ than for charged hadrons ppg003 , and that the yields of $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ near 2 GeV/$`c`$ in central events ppg006  are comparable to the yield of pions ($`p/\pi 1`$). This is in contrast to the $`p/\pi `$ ratios of $``$ 0.1 - 0.3, measured in $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$ ISR  and $`e^+e^{}`$ DELPHI  collisions, and to perturbative quantum chromodynamics phenomenology ptopi\_bjunctions . These results suggest that an investigation of particle composition is important for understanding the medium effect on high-$`p_{}`$ phenomena at RHIC. During the 2001 Au$`+`$Au run at $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200`$ GeV the PHENIX experiment collected data to study the scaling properties of $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ production as well as the $`p/\pi `$, $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ and charged hadron to pion ($`h/\pi `$) ratios as a function of centrality.

The PHENIX detector NIM  combines high momentum resolution with diverse particle identification (PID), resulting in hadron identification over a broad momentum range. The present results combine the measurements of $`\pi ^\pm `$, $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ with those of neutral pions ppg014  and inclusive charged hadrons JiaQM02 . A “minimum bias” trigger based on signals from the Beam-Beam Counters (BBC) and Zero-Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) sampled $`92.2_3^{+2.5}\%`$ of the inelastic Au$`+`$Au cross-section of $`\sigma _{inel}^{AuAu}`$ = $`6.9`$ b ppg014 . The collision vertex is restricted to $`\pm `$ 30 cm of the nominal origin. Approximately $`2\times 10^7`$ ($`3\times 10^7`$) minimum bias events are used in the charged (neutral) particle analysis. These samples are subdivided into 7 centrality classes based on cuts in the combined ZDC and BBC response: 0-10%, 10-20%, 20-30%, 30-40%, 40-50%, 50-60%, 60-92% of $`\sigma _{inel}^{AuAu}`$. The average number of participants ($`N_{\mathrm{𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡}}`$) and collisions $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ for each centrality class are derived from a Glauber model calculation ppg014 .

Identified charged particles are measured over a subset of the PHENIX East-arm spectrometer covering pseudo-rapidity $`|\eta |<0.35`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =\pi /8`$ in azimuthal angle. PID is based on particle mass calculated from the measured momentum and velocity. The momentum resolution is $`\delta p/p0.7\%1\%\times p`$ (GeV/$`c`$) and is provided by a multi-layer drift chamber (DC) followed by a multi-wire proportional chamber with pad readout (PC1). The velocity is obtained by measuring the time-of-flight (TOF) and the path length along the trajectory. The timing system uses the BBC to provide a global start signal; hits on the TOF scintillator wall, located at a radial distance of 5.06 m, provide individual stop signals. The resolution is $`\sigma 115`$ ps, which allows a 4$`\sigma `$ $`\pi /K`$ and $`K/p`$ separation up to $`p_{}2`$ GeV/$`c`$ and $`p_{}4`$ GeV/$`c`$, respectively. A $`2\sigma `$ momentum dependent cut in mass squared is used up to $`p_{}=2`$ GeV/$`c`$ and $`p_{}=4`$ GeV/$`c`$ to select $`\pi `$ and $`(\overline{p})p`$. Asymmetric cuts are applied at higher momenta to extend the $`\pi /K`$ and $`K/p`$ separation up to $`p_{}`$ of 3 and 4.5 GeV/$`c`$. The spectra are corrected for geometrical acceptance, decay-in-flight, and reconstruction efficiency using a GEANT-based Monte Carlo (MC) simulation and embedding simulated tracks into real events with different particle multiplicities.

The $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ yields are corrected for feed-down from weak decays using a MC simulation and the measured $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/p`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{p}`$ ratios at $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130`$ GeV lambda  which include contributions from $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^0`$. Corrections for feed-down from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm `$ are not applied, but estimates based on HIJING MC give less than $`5`$% contribution. At $`p_{}=0.65`$ GeV/$`c`$, about 40% of the inclusive $`(\overline{p})p`$ come from weak decays. This fraction reduces to $`25`$% at 4 GeV/$`c`$. The systematic uncertainty of this correction is estimated at 6% by varying the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/p`$ ($`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{p}`$) ratios within the $`\pm 24\%`$ errors of the $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130`$ measurement and assuming $`m_T`$-scaling at high-$`p_{}`$. The above uncertainty could be larger if the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/p`$ ($`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{p}`$) ratios change significantly with $`p_{}`$ and beam energy. The additional systematic error on the overall normalization is 8% for $`p_{}<3`$ GeV/$`c`$ and 12% above 3 GeV/$`c`$. Added in quadrature, the total systematic errors are 11% and 14%; the larger value is for $`p_{}>3`$ GeV/$`c`$.

Inclusive charged hadrons are measured in the West-arm spectrometer covering $`|\eta |<0.35`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =\pi /2`$. Two pad chambers (PC2, PC3) located at 4.2 m and 5 m, respectively and a Ring Imaging $`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{C}}`$erenkov Counter JiaQM02  are used to reject and subtract high-$`p_{}`$ background. The systematic error on the yields range from 11% for $`p_{}<5`$ GeV/$`c`$ to 45% at 9 GeV/$`c`$.

Neutral pions are reconstructed via the decay $`\pi ^0\gamma \gamma `$ through an invariant mass analysis of $`\gamma `$ pairs detected in the electromagnetic calorimeter (EMCal), which covers $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta =0.7`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =\pi `$. The absolute energy scale is known to $``$ 1.5%. The systematic errors on the $`\pi ^0`$ spectra range from 10% to 17%, from low to high $`p_{}`$ ppg014 .

Figure 1 shows the $`p/\pi `$ and $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ ratios as a function of $`p_{}`$ measured at mid-rapidity in central (0–10%), mid-central (20–30%), and peripheral (60–92%) Au$`+`$Au collisions. The open symbols represent the $`p/\pi ^+`$ and $`\overline{p}/\pi ^{}`$ measurements, while the closed symbols represent the corresponding $`p/\pi ^0`$ and $`\overline{p}/\pi ^0`$ ratios. The error bars are the quadratic sum of statistical errors and point-to-point systematic errors. There is an additional normalization uncertainty of $`8\%`$ (for $`p/\pi ^+`$, $`\overline{p}/\pi ^{}`$) and 12% (for $`p/\pi ^0`$, $`\overline{p}/\pi ^0`$), which may shift the curves up or down, but does not affect their shapes. In the region of overlap, the $`\pi ^\pm `$ and $`\pi ^0`$ measurements, with very different systematics, are consistent to within 5% to 15%. For all centralities the ratios rise steeply at low $`p_{}`$ and then, at a value of $`p_{}`$ which increases from peripheral to central collisions, level off. In central collisions the ratios are a factor of $`3`$ larger than in peripheral events. At $`p_{}>2`$ GeV/$`c`$ the peripheral Au$`+`$Au data agree well with the ratios observed in $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$ collisions at lower energies ISR  (shown with stars). The $`(p+\overline{p})/(\pi ^++\pi ^{})`$ ratio in gluon and quark jets produced in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions DELPHI  is shown with dashed (dotted) line. Above 3 GeV/$`c`$ the $`p/\pi `$, $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ ratios from peripheral collisions are also consistent with gluon and quark jet fragmentation, which should be independent of the collision system. Deviations from jet fragmentation below 3 GeV/$`c`$ indicate the absence of soft hadron production in the $`e^+e^{}`$ data.

Hydrodynamic models have had success reproducing $`(\overline{p})p`$ ppg006 ; star\_pbar  and $`\pi `$ data ppg006  from $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130`$ GeV Au$`+`$Au collisions TeaneyKolb ; Florkowski  and preliminary 200 GeV data Rapp . The calculations show good agreement with the central $`p,\overline{p}`$ and $`\pi ^\pm `$ spectra up to $`p_{}`$ 3 and 2 GeV/$`c`$, respectively. In peripheral collisions the calculations deviate from the data above $`p_{}1`$ GeV/$`c`$. Within these models the large $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ ratio is a natural consequence of the strong radial flow Heinz . All particle spectra converge to the same slope if $`p_{}`$ is sufficiently larger than the particle mass $`p_{}m_0`$. The $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ ratio is $`R_{\overline{p}/\pi }2\mathrm{exp}(\mu _b/T_{ch})`$, governed only by the baryon chemical potential $`\mu _b`$ and the chemical freeze-out temperature $`T_{ch}`$. Using $`T_{ch}=177`$ MeV and $`\mu _b=29`$ MeV PBM  $`R_{\overline{p}/\pi }`$ reaches a limiting value of 1.7. Within 10%, the same limiting behavior is expected for all centralities, since the thermal parameters vary only weakly with centrality Cleymans . The data are not only below the asymptotic value but also show a more pronounced centrality dependence than can be accommodated by hydrodynamics models. This suggests that other mechanisms begin to play a role before the asymptotic value is reached. At intermediate $`p_{}`$ ($`2<p_{}<4`$ GeV/$`c`$), hard scattering is one possible mechanism that competes with “soft” processes as described by hydrodynamics.

Figure 2 shows the $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ spectra for different centralities (0–10%, 20–30%, 40–50%, 60–92%) scaled by the corresponding value of $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ ppg014 . Error bars are statistical only. Multiplicity dependent systematic errors are of the order 3%. Errors on $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ range from $`10\%`$ for central to $`28\%`$ for the peripheral event class. Below $`p_{}1.5`$ GeV/$`c`$ the $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ yields scale slower than $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ as expected for soft processes, and the effect of the radial flow on the shape of the spectra is clearly visible. The inverse slopes gradually increase from the most peripheral to the most central event class. Beyond $`p_{}`$ 1.5 GeV/$`c`$ all spectra converge to the *same* slope and seem to obey $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ scaling as expected for production due to hard processes in the absence of nuclear effects.

Figure 3 compares the $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ scaled central to peripheral yield ratios,

$$R_{\mathrm{CP}}=\frac{yield^{010\%}/N_{coll}^{010\%}}{yield^{6092\%}/N_{coll}^{6092\%}},$$
(1)
for $`(p+\overline{p})/2`$ and $`\pi ^0`$. In the $`p_{}`$ range from 1.5 to 4.5 GeV/$`c`$, $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ are not suppressed in contrast to $`\pi ^0`$ which are reduced by a factor of 2-3. Moreover, this behavior holds for all centrality selections (Fig. 2), while the suppression in the $`\pi ^0`$ yields increases from peripheral to central collisions ppg014 . The apparent scaling with $`N_{\mathrm{𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡}}`$ for $`p_{}4`$ GeV/$`c`$, of inclusive charged hadrons PHOBOS  which has been interpreted in terms of saturation scenario saturation  appears to be somewhat coincidental, since we observe a strong species dependence not expected in the model. However, the interpretation in terms of soft and hard processes is also not straightforward. If both $`\pi `$ and $`p`$, $`\overline{p}`$ originate from the fragmentation of hard-scattered partons that lose energy in the medium, the nuclear modification factor $`R_{\mathrm{CP}}`$ should be independent of particle species contrary to our result. As discussed above, for a “hard” description to hold, the particle ratios $`\overline{p}/\pi `$ and $`p/\pi `$ should reflect the fragmentation function, which favors pion production.

It is possible that nuclear effects such as the “Cronin effect” cronin1977 ; antreasyan1979  contribute to the observed large $`(\overline{p})p/\pi `$ ratios. In $`p+`$A collisions at energies up to $`\sqrt{s}=38.8`$ GeV a nuclear enhancement beyond $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$ scaling has been observed for $`\pi ,K,p`$ and their anti-particles Straub . The effect is larger for $`p(\overline{p})`$ than for $`\pi `$ which leads to an enhancement of the $`(\overline{p})p/\pi `$ ratio compared to $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$ collisions. For $`p+W`$ the increase is a factor of $`2`$ in the range 3 $`<p_{}<6`$GeV/$`c`$. Theoretical descriptions assume that the effect is due to initial state scattering or $`p_{}`$-broadening pt\_broadening . Recent results comparing charged hadrons to $`\pi ^0`$ in d$`+`$Au at $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200`$ GeV suggest that the Cronin effect in baryons is different from that in mesons ppg028 . Another possibility is that the variation in the $`p/\pi `$ ratio with centrality reflects a medium-induced difference in the formation time of baryons and mesons - an effect which has been cited to explain DIS results HERMES .

Recently, the abundance of $`p`$ relative to $`\pi `$ in central collisions has been attributed to the recombination, rather than fragmentation, of quarks recombination . In this model, recombination for $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ is effective up to $`p_{}5`$ GeV above which fragmentation dominates for all particle species. Another explanation of the observed large baryon content invokes a topological gluon configuration: the baryon junction bjunctions . A centrality dependence, which is in qualitative agreement with our results, has been predicted ptopi\_bjunctions . In both theoretical models, the baryon/meson enhancement is limited to $`p_{}<`$ 5–6 GeV/$`c`$. The identification of charged particles beyond $`p_{}4.5`$ GeV/$`c`$ is not yet possible with the current PHENIX configuration, however the baryon content at high $`p_{}`$ can be tracked indirectly using the $`h/\pi ^0`$ ratio.

Figure 4 shows $`h/\pi ^0`$ for central and peripheral Au$`+`$Au collisions. The error bars represent the quadratic sum of statistical and point-to-point systematic errors. In peripheral Au+Au collisions, $`R_{h/\pi ^0}`$ is consistent with the measurement in $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$. In central collisions in the region $`1<p_{}<`$ 4.5 GeV/$`c`$, $`R_{h/\pi ^0}`$ is enhanced by as much as 50% above the $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$ value. As shown in Fig. 1, this enhancement is due to a large baryon contribution. Above $`p_{}5`$ GeV/$`c`$, the particle composition is consistent with that measured in $`p`$$`+`$$`p`$ collisions. This indicates that the centrality-scaling of the $`p`$ yields should become consistent with that of $`\pi `$ at higher $`p_T`$ ($`5`$ GeV/$`c`$). Similar trends are observed in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`K_S^0`$ measurements by the STAR collaboration star\_k0 .

We have presented a systematic study of high-$`p_{}`$ particle composition in Au$`+`$Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200`$ GeV as a function of centrality. A large $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ contribution which increases from peripheral to central collisions is observed in the range $`1.5<p_{}<4.5`$ GeV/$`c`$. In this $`p_{}`$ range, the $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ yields scale with $`N_{\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙}}`$, as expected for hard-scattering. This is in contrast to the centrality-dependent suppression of $`\pi ^0`$ production. The baryon enhancement with respect to $`\pi `$ seems to be limited to transverse momenta $`p_{}5`$ GeV/$`c`$, as deduced from the measurement of the ratio of inclusive charged hadrons to $`\pi ^0`$. We conclude that $`\pi `$ and $`(\overline{p})p`$ have different dominant production mechanisms for $`p_{}<5`$ GeV/$`c`$.

We thank the staff of the Collider-Accelerator and Physics Departments at BNL for their vital contributions. We acknowledge support from the Department of Energy and NSF (U.S.A.), MEXT and JSPS (Japan), CNPq and FAPESP (Brazil), NSFC (China), CNRS-IN2P3 and CEA (France), BMBF, DAAD, and AvH (Germany), OTKA (Hungary), DAE and DST (India), ISF (Israel), KRF and CHEP (Korea), RMIST, RAS, and RMAE, (Russia), VR and KAW (Sweden), U.S. CRDF for the FSU, US-Hungarian NSF-OTKA-MTA, and US-Israel BSF.


text:
# References

ON THE COMPOUND STRUCTURES OF THE NEUTRINO MASS AND CHARGE

Rasulkhozha S. Sharafiddinov

Institute of Nuclear Physics, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, Tashkent, 702132 Ulugbek, Uzbekistan

The mass and charge of a particle correspond to the most diverse form of the same regularity of the nature of this field. As a consequence, each of all possible types of charges testifies in favor of the existence of a kind of the inertial mass. Therefore, to investigate these features we have established the compound structures of mass and charge. They can explain also the availability of fundamental differences in the masses as well as in the charges of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos.

One of sharply expressed features of the interaction of Dirac $`(\nu _D\overline{\nu }_D)`$ and Majorana $`(\nu _M=\overline{\nu }_M)`$ neutrinos with field of emission  is the connection between these phenomena and character of the structure of fermions  themselves. At the same time a question about the nature, similarity and difference of masses of neutrinos of both types  remains thus far not finally investigated.

The nature is, according to well known considerations, created so that all the forces in it be have the unified regularity. From this point of view, becomes possible use the Newton law of gravity as the Coulomb law and vice versa. In other words, these forces correspond to the most diverse form of the same action. Exactly the same one can as the interacting objects choose the two of neutrinos. Such a procedure, however, takes place regardless of the neutrino structure of whether it is the Dirac or the Majorana fermion. In this a hard connection is said between the inertial mass of a particle and its physical nature.

Our study of elastic scattering of electrons and their neutrinos on a spinless nucleus shows  clearly that if the neutrino is the four - component particle $`(\nu =\nu _D=\nu _e)`$ having a Dirac mass $`m_{\nu _D},`$ it must possess both normal and anomalous electric charges. According to these data, the neutrino full electric charge in the static limit has the size

$$e_\nu =\frac{3eG_Fm_\nu ^2}{4\pi ^2\sqrt{2}},e=\left|e\right|.$$
(1)
Such a picture leading to the flip of the neutrino spin  and reflects the fact that the mass and charge of a particle correspond to two form of the same regularity of the nature of its structure .

For further purposes of a given work it is desirable to remind about the electron mass. From point of view of the classical theory of electromagnetic mass , the availability of the eigenenergy $`E_0`$ of the electron electrostatic field implies the existence of the electric part of the electron rest mass:

$$m_e^{em}=\frac{E_0}{c^2}.$$

The assumption has even been speaked out that all the mass of the electron is equal to its electromagnetic mass. This idea was simply called a hypothesis of field mass.

From our earlier developments, we find that a particle mass is strictly multicomponent. One of them corresponds to the electric charge and can be called a Coulomb mass. Insofar as the electrically neutral neutrino  is concerned, its mass does not contain the part, at which it would have as well as an electric charge.

The difference in the masses of Dirac $`(\nu =\nu _D)`$ and Majorana $`(\nu =\nu _M)`$ neutrinos is observed because each of all possible types of charges of the same neutrino arises as a consequence of the availability of a kind of the inertial mass. Thereby this mechanism leads to the appearance of the united rest mass $`m_\nu ^U`$ of the neutrino equal to all the mass of a given particle. Its general structure at the account of nonweak  and unknown properties of the neutrino has the form

$$m_\nu ^U=m_\nu ^E+m_\nu ^W+m_\nu ^S+\mathrm{},$$
(2)
where $`m_\nu ^E,m_\nu ^W`$ and $`m_\nu ^S`$ denote respectively the electric, weak and strong components of mass. Such a sight to the origination of $`m_\nu ^U`$ quality explains the presence of the united charge $`e_\nu ^U`$ of the neutrino equal to all the charge of a given fermion which contains the electric $`e_\nu ^E,`$ weak $`e_\nu ^W,`$ strong $`e_\nu ^S`$ and some other parts:

$$e_\nu ^U=e_\nu ^E+e_\nu ^W+e_\nu ^S+\mathrm{}.$$
(3)
So, it is seen that the mass and charge of a Dirac particle include in self both electric and unelectric components. Of course, our formula (1) characteize only a Coulomb mass dependence of the electric charge:

$$m_\nu =m_{\nu _D}^E,e_\nu =e_{\nu _D}^E.$$

Using this and by following the fact that the force of Newton attraction between the two neutrinos is less than the force of their Coulomb repulsion, we find that

$$m_{\nu _D}^E>1.5310^3\mathrm{eV},$$
(4)
$$e_{\nu _D}^E>1.4610^{30}\mathrm{e}.$$
(5)
It is clear, however, that the finding values of (4) and (5) are incompatible with the available laboratory data . At the same time this circumstance may serve as some confirmation of the availability of compound structures of mass and charge.

Thus, it follows that if neutrinos are of electrically neutral $`(\nu =\nu _M)`$ then $`m_{\nu _M}^E=0,e_{\nu _M}^E=0,`$ and the size of $`m_{\nu _M}^U`$ and $`e_{\nu _M}^U`$ are reduced to the form

$$m_{\nu _M}^U=m_{\nu _M}^W+m_{\nu _M}^S+\mathrm{},$$
(6)
$$e_{\nu _M}^U=e_{\nu _M}^W+e_{\nu _M}^S+\mathrm{}.$$
(7)
Comparing their with (2) and (3) at $`\nu =\nu _D,`$ it is easy to observe the fundamental differences in the masses as well as in the charges of neutrinos of the different nature.

Of course, the above - noted regularities of general picture of massive neutrinos extending well known hypothesis of field mass meet with many problems which require the study of the structure and property of each of existing types of charges and masses.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Burkhan K. Kerimov for his numerous valuable discussions and critical remarks that was useful in improving the manuscripit.


text:
# NMR Experiments on a Three-Dimensional Vibrofluidized Granular Medium

## I Introduction

One of the basic granular flow phenomena is the creation of a fluidized state by vibration of the container that holds the granular medium. If the container is vibrated vertically with a sinusoidal waveform $`z(t)=z_0\mathrm{cos}(\omega t)`$, the dimensionless acceleration amplitude relative to gravity is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\omega ^2z_0/g`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1`$ is required to set the granular system into motion Pöschel et al. (2000). A second key dimensionless parameter is $`X=N_{\mathrm{}}(1ϵ)`$, where $`ϵ`$ is the velocity restitution coefficient for grain-grain collisions not (a) and $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the number of grain layers (the height of the granular bed at rest divided by the grain diameter). Experiments and simulations in one and two dimensions suggest that $`X<X_f`$ with $`X_f1`$ is required to reach a *uniformly fluidized* state, in which the stochastic motions of the grains exceed motions that are harmonically or sub-harmonically related to the container vibration Luding et al. (1994a, b); Bernu et al. (1994). For larger $`X>X_f`$ inelastic collisions rapidly quench stochastic grain motion and the granular bed moves as a coherent mass over much of the vibration cycle, leading to phenomena such as subharmonic surface patterns and localized “oscillon” structures Melo et al. (1995); Clément et al. (1996); Umbanhowar et al. (1996).

In this paper we report an experimental study of the uniformly fluidized state in three dimensions, using NMR techniques to probe the grain density profile and velocity distribution. Many authors have applied the methods of statistical mechanics to the fluidized granular state Jenkins and Savage (1983); Haff (1983); Lun et al. (1984); Grossman et al. (1997); van Noije et al. (1998); Sela and Goldhirsch (1998); Garzó and Dufty (1999); Soto et al. (2001). Typically, one defines a “granular temperature” proportional to the random kinetic energy per degree of freedom of the grains, and hopes to apply hydrodynamic concepts such as thermal conductivity and viscosity to the granular fluid. Using NMR we are able to directly measure the granular temperature profile in a dense, three-dimensional sample for comparison with hydrodynamic theory.

Such comparisons are significant as the applicability of hydrodynamics to granular systems is questionable. In a vibrofluidized state with energy injection from below, as studied here, the granular temperature varies sharply with height over distances comparable to the mean free path. Hence the separation between microscopic and macroscopic (hydrodynamic) length scales is marginal, and hydrodynamics may or may not provide an accurate description of the system Tan and Goldhirsch (1998); Dufty and Brey (1999); Goldhirsch (2001).

Previous experiments have created (quasi) *two-dimensional* systems by confining grains between vertical plates or on a horizontal or tilted surface, enabling data collection by high-speed video Clément and Rajchenbach (1991); Warr et al. (1995); Losert et al. (1999); Olafsen and Urbach (1999); Wildman et al. (1999); Rouyer and Menon (2000); Blair and Kudrolli (2001); Rericha et al. (2001). *Three-dimensional* granular systems have been studied experimentally by external probes such as capacitance Knight et al. (1995), mutual inductance Falcon et al. (1999) and diffusing-wave spectroscopy Menon and Durian (1997), as well as by non-invasive internal probes including NMR Nakagawa et al. (1993); Knight et al. (1996); Caprihan et al. (1997); Yang and Candela (2000); Mueth et al. (2000); Caprihan and Seymour (2000) and positron-emission particle tracking (PEPT) Wildman et al. (2001). The PEPT method has been used to measure the granular temperature profile of a vibrofluidized bed at volume filling fractions up to 0.15 Wildman et al. (2001). In the present study using NMR, we have measured granular temperature profiles at much higher densities, up to 0.45 volume filling fraction. Density is a key parameter for granular flows, as studies suggest the existence of long-lived fluctuations and glassy, out-of-equilibrium behavior as the density increases towards the random-close-packed volume filling fraction $`0.6`$, signaling a breakdown of conventional hydrodynamics Denniston and Li (1999); Howell et al. (1999); Silbert et al. (2002); Longhi et al. (2002). Even in the absence of glassiness there are precollision velocity correlations which increase with density Soto et al. (2001); Pagonabarraga et al. (2001); these correlations are included in some hydrodynamic theories van Noije et al. (1998) but ignored in others (“molecular chaos” assumption) Garzó and Dufty (1999).

Other workers have used NMR to study the dense granular flows that occur in a rotating drum Nakagawa et al. (1993); Caprihan and Seymour (2000), for quasi-static tapping Knight et al. (1996), in a period-doubled arching flow Caprihan et al. (1997), and in a Couette shear apparatus Mueth et al. (2000). In contrast to these earlier studies we probe a system sufficiently simple to be described by first-principles granular hydrodynamics. In addition, we use rapid gradient pulse sequences to probe deep within the ballistic regime, which has not been possible for these very dense systems.

In the experiments described here, small samples consisting of 45 - 80 mustard seeds of mean diameter 1.84 mm were confined to a cylindrical sample tube with 9 mm inside diameter, and vibrated vertically at $`\omega /2\pi =50`$ Hz, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=15`$–18. The sample container was sufficiently tall to prevent grain collisions with the container top. The total number of grains is small in our experiments (compared, for example, with the number of particles in recent molecular-dynamics simulations Bougie et al. (2002)). However these physical experiments include effects present in practical applications but not usually addressed by simulations: irregular and variable grain size, grain rotation, realistic inelastic collisions, and the effect of interstitial gas.

The granular systems studied here were small both horizontally (5 grain diameters) and vertically ($`N_{\mathrm{}}4`$), and thus it may be surprising that they can be successfully described by a hydrodynamic theory. The small sample diameter was simply a consequence of the inner diameter of the NMR apparatus that was available, and could be increased in future studies. Conversely, the sample depth is inherently limited to a small number of layers by the fluidization condition $`N_{\mathrm{}}(1ϵ)1`$. Therefore *physical* vibrofluidized systems (which typically have $`ϵ0.9`$) are limited to $`N_{\mathrm{}}10`$ and the applicability of granular hydrodynamics is a nontrivial question to be tested by experiment.

A short report of some of this work was published in Ref. Yang et al., 2002, using a single set of $`N_{\mathrm{}},\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ values. For the present report, both $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ were varied. In addition improved methods were developed for calibrating the NMR gradient coils, resulting in more accurate granular temperature profiles. In particular, better agreement is found with hydrodynamic predictions for the “temperature inversion” that occurs at the free upper surface.

## II Experimental methods

### II.1 Experimental setup for NMR of vibrated media

The experiments were carried out in a vertical-bore superconducting magnet with a lab-built 40 MHz NMR probe equipped with gradient coils for pulsed field gradient (PFG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies. The low static field value (0.94 T) was chosen to minimize magnetic field gradients in the sample due to the susceptibility difference between grains and voids. This permitted the use of a simple unipolar PFG sequence (Fig. 1) for the fastest possible time resolution. The 9 mm inside diameter, 6.5 cm high sample chamber had a glass side wall to minimize energy transfers between grains and the side wall. The teflon bottom wall was pierced by an array of 30 0.46 mm diameter holes, making it possible to evacuate the sample container. An external vacuum gauge registered less than 200 mtorr during experiments with evacuated samples.

A loudspeaker connected to the chamber by a fiberglass support tube and driven by a function generator and audio amplifier was used to vibrate the sample container vertically with a sinusoidal waveform. The amplitude and phase of the container motion were precisely measured by fitting the digitized output of a micromachined accelerometer (Analog Devices ADXL50) mounted to the support tube just below the NMR magnet. The gradient coils used for position (MRI) and displacement (PFG) measurements were calibrated by combining data from measurements on phantoms of known dimensions, along with diffusion measurements on a water sample. In this way we obtained calibration maps for each gradient coil of both the gradient in the designed direction, and the total gradient magnitude including components orthogonal to the designed direction. The accelerometer and vertical gradient calibrations were cross-checked by measuring the displacement waveform for a granular sample consolidated with epoxy. The dimensionless acceleration values $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ reported here are accurate to within $`\pm 0.1`$.

### II.2 Granular samples

Previous NMR studies of granular media used plant seeds or liquid-filled capsules to take advantage of the long-lived NMR signals produced by liquids Nakagawa et al. (1993); Knight et al. (1996); Caprihan et al. (1997); Yang and Candela (2000); Mueth et al. (2000); Caprihan and Seymour (2000). For the present study, we chose mustard seeds not (b) which showed no tendency to static charging. The seeds were ellipsoidal, with three unequal major diameters and eccentricity $`20\%`$. The average of all three diameters measured for a sample of 10 seeds was $`d=1.84`$ mm with a standard deviation of 5%, and the average mass was $`m=4.98`$ mg/seed. These average values of $`d`$ and $`m`$ are used below for comparison with a hydrodynamic theory, which is formulated for samples of identical grains.

To roughly measure the restitution coefficient $`ϵ`$, a video camera was used to record the bounce height when the seeds were dropped onto a stone surface. As some linear kinetic energy is converted to rotational energy upon impact, this gives a lower bound on $`ϵ`$. Conversely the smallest drop velocity that could readily be used (44 cm/s) was larger than the typical RMS velocity in our vibrofluidized experiments ($`30`$ cm/s). Since $`ϵ`$ is often a decreasing function of impact velocity Ramírez et al. (1999); King et al. , the restitution coefficient in the vibrofluidized experiments should be greater than is measured in the dropping trials. The $`ϵ`$ value deduced from the highest rebound over 15 dropping trials on each of five seeds ranged from 0.83 to 0.92, with an average of 0.86.

### II.3 Data acquisition

Proton NMR signals from the mustard-seed sample were acquired using the PFG/MRI sequence shown in Fig. 1. After Fourier-transformation with respect to time, this sequence yields the position-dependent PFG signal (one-dimensional image)

$$h(q_u,v)=p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)e^{iq_u\mathrm{\Delta }u}𝑑q_u$$
(1)
where $`v=x`$, $`y`$ or $`z`$ is the direction of the MRI gradient and $`u=x`$, $`y`$ or $`z`$ is the direction of the PFG gradient. In this equation $`q_u`$ is proportional to the area of the PFG gradient pulse, which is varied through an array of regularly spaced values (Fig. 1). Here the “propagator” $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)`$ is the joint probability that a grain (more precisely an oil molecule in a grain) is located at position $`v`$ and moves a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$ during the time interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ set by the pulse sequence Callaghan (1991). From Eq. 1, the propagator $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)`$ can be obtained by Fourier transforming the NMR signal $`h(q_u,v)`$ with respect to $`q_u`$. With the gradient values used in these experiments the propagator was obtained with resolutions of 500 $`\mu `$m in the position variable $`v`$ and 42 $`\mu `$m in the displacement variable $`u`$.

This type of NMR experiment does not determine the positions or displacements of individual grains. Rather, an ensemble average, the propagator, is obtained. Provided that the propagator has a well defined time average at each phase of the vibration cycle, the NMR acquisition can be repeated as many times as necessary to build up good signal/noise. Allowing full longitudinal relaxation between acquisitions (the simplest but not the fastest way to take data), the acquisition time for a time-resolved propagator $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v,t)`$ was 21 hours.

### II.4 Measurement of RMS displacement

For some purposes, the full propagator $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)`$ is of interest, while for other purposes (e.g. measuring the granular temperature) only the position-dependent RMS displacement is required,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }u_{\text{rms}}(v)=\left(\frac{1}{n(v)}p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)(\mathrm{\Delta }u)^2d(\mathrm{\Delta }u)\right)^{1/2}.$$
(2)
Here $`n(v)=p(\mathrm{\Delta }u,v)d(\mathrm{\Delta }u)`$ is the position dependent number density. Both $`n(v)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }u_{\text{rms}}(v)`$ can be obtained directly from the NMR data (before it is Fourier transformed to yield the propagator) using

$`n(v)`$ $`=`$ $`h(0,v),`$ (3)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }u_{\text{rms}}(v)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{n(v)}}{\displaystyle \frac{^2h(q_u,v)}{q_u^2}}|_{q_u=0}\right)^{1/2}.`$
For optimum signal/noise we evaluated the RHS of these expressions by fitting the central (small $`|q_u|`$) portion of $`h(q_u,v)`$ to a function including constant, quadratic, and higher terms.

## III Experimental Results: Density and Displacement Distributions

In the present experiments, all measured quantities depended strongly on height $`z`$, due to gravity and the localization of energy injection at the sample bottom. Therefore, most data were taken with the MRI axis $`v=z`$. As both vertical and horizontal grain motion were of interest, for the PFG axis both $`u=z`$ and $`u=x`$ were used. Thus, the primary experimental data shown in this paper are the height-dependent number density $`n(z)`$, the vertical and horizontal displacement propagators $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }z,z)`$ and $`p(\mathrm{\Delta }x,z)`$, and the vertical and horizontal RMS displacements $`\mathrm{\Delta }z_{\text{rms}}(z)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_{\text{rms}}(z)`$. In addition, some data were taken using a two-dimensional MRI sequence to verify that the grain density was approximately uniform in the horizontal plane and to calibrate the number of layers $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ (Appendix A).

The granular state with $`N_{\mathrm{}}=3.0`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=15`$, and sample cell evacuated was selected as a reference state measured in greatest detail, and other states were selected by varying a single parameter from the reference value. The following variations were carried out: (a) increase of ambient air pressure up to 1 atm, (b) variation of $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ from 2.2 to 4.0, (c) variation of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ up to 18. The upper limit on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ was set by the apparatus, while the lower limit on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the upper limit on $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ were set by the requirement that the sample fully and consistently fluidize, when observed visually outside of the NMR apparatus. For smaller $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ or larger $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ we observe a complex, hysteretic transition to a partially fluidized, partially jammed state which is beyond the scope of the present study.

### III.1 Effects of Interstitial Air

Most of our data were taken with the sample container evacuated. Some of the measurements were repeated in normal atmospheric conditions, to determine how large the interstitial gas effects could be. Experimentally, the effect of air is unobservably small (Fig. 2). This agrees with the following rough estimate of viscous energy losses due to air drag. The mean free path varies widely with height in our system but a typical value is $`\lambda 0.3d`$ (Appendix B). Similarly, a typical grain velocity is on the order of 20 cm/s. Using these values and the drag force on a sphere in an unbounded medium, we compute that the fraction of kinetic energy lost to viscous drag over one mean free path is $`9\times 10^4`$ for $`p=1`$ atm and $`3\times 10^4`$ for $`p=200`$ mtorr. These energy losses are negligible compared to the fraction of kinetic energy lost in an intergrain collision, $`1ϵ^20.24`$.

### III.2 Time-resolved density and displacement profiles

In Sec. IV below the NMR data are fitted to a hydrodynamic theory which models the granular system as a fluid with time-independent (but spatially varying) grain velocity distribution. In this picture, the vibrating container bottom serves to inject energy (granular “heat”) into the system. For such a picture to make sense, the overall state of the granular system must be nearly independent of time within the vibration cycle.

We have taken some NMR data as a function of $`t`$ within the 20 ms container vibration period, Figs. 3 and 4. The density profile (Fig. 3) is indeed largely independent of $`t`$ over most of the sample, except for a noticeable disturbance at small $`z`$ for $`t`$ near the top of the container’s motion, when the container floor impacts the sample. In the bottom layer of the sample, this disturbance damps out (thermalizes) over a time span of less than 10 ms, and above the bottom layer it is hardly evident at all. Similarly, in the RMS displacement profile (Fig. 4) a large transient is visible in the vertical displacement due to grains impacted by the container bottom, while the horizontal displacement transient is much smaller relative to the time-average value.

Over most of the cycle the sample “floats” well above the vibrating container floor (Fig. 3), illustrating two important points about the vibrofluidization process: (a) It is possible to achieve a nearly time-independent fluid-like granular state even though the driving vibration amplitude is much greater than typical stochastic motion within the sample. The required conditions are (i) $`\omega ^{}=\omega (d/g)^{1/2}>1`$, which ensures that the sample itself only falls a grain-scale distance in one vibration period no matter how large the container oscillation amplitude is, and (ii) $`X=N_{\mathrm{}}(1ϵ)1`$, allowing the sample to fully fluidize. For the experiments described here $`\omega ^{}=4.3`$ and $`0.29X0.52`$. (b) For realistic multilayer granular systems, the primary contact between the grains and the vibrating cell bottom occurs near the top of the vibration stoke, when the cell bottom velocity is much less than its RMS value. Therefore, the energy transfer into the granular medium cannot be estimated, even roughly, from the RMS driver velocity. This is because the energy transfer depends upon the mean cell bottom velocity *during grain impacts* McNamara and Luding (1998).

Apart from Figs. 3 and 4 the data shown in this paper have all been averaged over the vibration cycle for improved signal/noise. It should be born in mind that the state of the system is not, in fact time-independent very near the sample bottom and that the complex process of energy transfer from the vibrating base is not captured by these time averages.

### III.3 Short time displacements: Crossover to the ballistic regime

Figure 5 shows the RMS vertical and horizontal grain motion in the reference state $`N_{\mathrm{}}=3.0`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=15`$ as functions of the displacement measurement time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, for slices at three different heights $`z`$ within the sample. At each height there is a crossover at short $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ to the power law $`\mathrm{\Delta }z_{\text{rms}},\mathrm{\Delta }x_{\text{rms}}\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, which indicates ballistic behavior (displacements proportional to time). For longer $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ the data fall below the ballistic power law, possibly crossing over to a diffusive power law $`\mathrm{\Delta }z_{\text{rms}},\mathrm{\Delta }x_{\text{rms}}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)^{1/2}`$. The crossover time, which is an estimate of a typical grain collision time, ranges from 5 ms in the dense, lower portion of the sample to 10 ms in the less dense, upper portion of the sample. In Appendix B, it is shown that the crossover time agrees well with the grain collision time computed from the mean free path and the measured granular temperature.

A key feature of our experiments is the ability to take data for displacement intervals $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ much less than the grain collision time, i.e. deep within the ballistic regime. The RMS displacement data shown in the remainder of this paper was taken with $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=1.38`$ ms, well within the ballistic regime for all values of $`N_{\mathrm{}},\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ used.

### III.4 Horizontal and vertical velocity distributions: Deviations from Gaussian

Figures 6 and 7 show the distributions of vertical and horizontal displacements, respectively, for the reference vibrofluidized state $`N_{\mathrm{}}=3.0`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=15`$ and displacement observation time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=1.38`$ ms within the ballistic regime. These propagators should be good approximations to the distributions of vertical and horizontal velocities, $`p(v_{z,x},z)`$ with $`v_{z,x}=\mathrm{\Delta }z,x/\mathrm{\Delta }t`$.

In some previous experiments Losert et al. (1999); Olafsen and Urbach (1999); Rouyer and Menon (2000); Blair and Kudrolli (2001) and simulations Brey and Ruiz-Montero  of granular fluids (mostly in reduced dimensions) significant deviations have been found between the measured velocity distribution, and the Gaussian (Maxwell-Boltzmann) distribution that describes an elastic fluid in equilibrium, $`p(v_i)\mathrm{exp}(mv_i^2/2T)`$ (setting Boltzmann’s constant to unity). For example, Rouyer and Menon Rouyer and Menon (2000) found that the distribution of horizontal velocities in a two-dimensional vibrofluidized media robustly obeyed

$$p(v_x)\mathrm{exp}[|v_x/\sigma _\alpha |^\alpha ]$$
(4)
with $`\alpha =1.55\pm 0.1`$. Using kinetic theory it has been shown that the *tails* of the velocity distribution should follow Eq. 4 with $`\alpha =1`$ for a freely-cooling granular gas, and $`\alpha =3/2`$ for a granular gas with stochastic forcing applied to every grain van Noije and Ernst (1998). However, for the freely-cooling case the *central* part of the distribution is nearly Gaussian ($`\alpha =2`$) and the crossover to $`\alpha =1`$ occurs very far out in the tails Brey et al. (1999).

In the present experiments and those of Ref. Rouyer and Menon, 2000 a steady state was achieved by supplying energy from the boundaries of the system, which corresponds neither to the freely cooling nor to the uniformly heated case. A few recent theoretical and simulation studies have treated the two-dimensional granular fluid with a strong thermal gradient, as occurs in vibrofluidization experiments, and have found features such as anisotropic granular temperature, asymmetric velocity distributions, and non-universal values of the velocity-stretching exponent $`\alpha `$ Sunthar and Kumaran (2000); Brey et al. (2001a); Brey and Ruiz-Montero ; Barrat and Trizac .

In previous work the measured velocity distribution typically has been scaled by the RMS velocity $`\sigma `$ (note $`\sigma \sigma _\alpha `$). This is possible for simulations and for video experiments in which every particle is tracked, allowing $`\sigma `$ to be computed unambiguously. In NMR experiments there is a noise floor, visible in Figs. 6,7, which could conceal tails of the distribution contributing to $`\sigma `$. One possibility would be to use direct measurement of the RMS velocity from $`q`$-space data, described in Sect. II.4 and used below to measure the granular temperature. Here we have taken the simpler approach of directly fitting the experimental velocity distributions to Eq. 4, allowing the width parameter $`\sigma _\alpha `$ to vary. The results of these fits are shown in Fig. 8.

The fitted stretching exponents for vertical and horizontal velocity distributions $`\alpha _z,\alpha _x`$ generally lie between 1.5 and 2.0, with values closer to 2.0 (Gaussian) near the top of the sample. Altough $`\alpha _z`$ and $`\alpha _x`$ are not significantly different, the large error bars for $`\alpha _z`$ near the sample bottom reflect the fact that the experimental velocity distribution is asymmetric (Fig. 6) and hence does not fit Eq. 4 well. The present results for $`\alpha _x`$ in a three-dimensional vibrofluidized system appear marginally different from the corresponding two-dimensional results of Ref. Rouyer and Menon, 2000. Some of this difference may simply be due to the different way in which we fit the data, allowing $`\sigma _\alpha `$ to vary rather than fixing it to a precisely measured experimental value. Our results are similar to the two-dimensional simulation results of Ref. Brey and Ruiz-Montero , which found deviations from Gaussian are most pronounced near the bottom of the system.

## IV Fit to a Hydrodynamic Theory

### IV.1 Granular hydrodynamics for a stationary vibrofluidized state

Granular hydrodynamic equations have been derived by many groups, using increasingly sophisticated approximation schemes Jenkins and Savage (1983); Haff (1983); Lun et al. (1984); Grossman et al. (1997); van Noije et al. (1998); Sela and Goldhirsch (1998); Garzó and Dufty (1999). In this section we show how any of these theories may be numerically integrated for comparison with experiments. Section IV.2 shows this comparison between the theory of Ref. Garzó and Dufty, 1999 and our experimental results.

In Ref. Bougie et al. (2002) granular hydrodynamics was successfully used to describe a *nonstationary* simulation with large variations of the density profile over the course of a vibration cycle. Here, we specialize to the simpler situation in which the average velocity field $`𝐯(𝐫,t)`$ vanishes and the number density field $`n(𝐫,t)`$ and temperature field $`T(𝐫,t)`$ are independent of $`t`$ and depend upon $`𝐫`$ only via the height coordinate $`z`$. We consider a system of $`N`$ identical spherical grains of diameter $`d`$ and mass $`m`$.

With these assumptions the pressure $`p(z)`$ and number density $`n(z)`$ satisfy a hydrostatic equilibrium equation

$$dp/dz=mgn$$
(5)
and the upward heat flux $`q_z(z)`$ obeys an energy flux balance equation

$$dq_z/dz=P_c$$
(6)
where $`P_c`$ is rate of kinetic energy loss per unit volume, due to inelastic collisions. The heat flux is

$$q_z=\kappa (dT/dz)\mu (dn/dz)$$
(7)
where $`\kappa `$ is the conventional thermal conductivity, and $`\mu `$ is a transport coefficient that is nonzero only for inelastic systems Lun et al. (1984). Due to the second term in Eq. 7, it is possible to have a flow of heat from colder regions to warmer ones. Although a number of authors have calculated $`\mu `$ Lun et al. (1984); Sela and Goldhirsch (1998); Garzó and Dufty (1999) and discussed the consequences of $`\mu 0`$ Soto et al. (1999); Brey et al. (2001b); Ramírez and Soto , to our knowledge no heuristic explanation has been proposed for the existence of a heat current driven by density gradients. This density-driven heat current has a marked effect in the present experiments.

Equations 5-7 are simply the results of definitions and of momentum and energy conservation. A hydrodynamic theory closes this set of equations by providing expressions for $`p(n,T)`$ (the equation of state), $`P_c`$, $`\kappa `$ and $`\mu `$. It is convenient to nondimensionalize variables using the grain diameter $`d`$, grain mass $`m`$, and gravity $`g`$,

$`z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`(zz_0)/d,`$ (8)
$`n^{}`$ $`=`$ $`nd^3,`$
$`T_{(i)}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`T_{(i)}/mgd,`$
$`q_z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`q_z(d/g)^{3/2}/m.`$
Here $`z_0`$ is the height of the bottom of the sample, corresponding to $`z^{}=0`$.

For a hard-sphere system with constant restitution coefficient the equation of state takes the form

$$p/nT=f(n^{}).$$
(9)
Using Eqs. 5-7 and 9 the following expression is derived for the density gradient:

$$\frac{dn}{dz}=\frac{q_z/\kappa mg/f}{(T/n)(1+\frac{n^{}}{f}\frac{df}{dn^{}})\mu /\kappa }.$$
(10)
Equations 5, 6 and 10 are coupled first order ordinary differential equations for $`\{p,q_z,n\}`$ that can be numerically integrated from the sample bottom at $`z_0`$ to $`z=+\mathrm{}`$. The boundary conditions are as follows. For a system in gravity with no upper wall, the pressure and heat current satisfy $`p(+\mathrm{})=0`$, $`q_z(+\mathrm{})=0`$. Using Eq. 5 this gives $`p(z_0)=mgn_A`$, where $`n_A=_{z_0}^+\mathrm{}n(z)𝑑z`$ is the total number of grains in the sample per unit horizontal cross section. The heat current into the system at the bottom $`q_z(z_0)`$ is an input parameter determined by the vibration amplitude and frequency and the system response. For given values of $`q_z(z_0)`$ and $`p(z_0)`$, the density at the bottom $`n(z_0)`$ must be adjusted to satisfy the upper boundary condition $`q_z(+\mathrm{})=0`$.

Using our convention, the dimensionless (starred) forms of Eqs. 5-10 and the boundary conditions are obtained by setting $`m=g=d=1`$. We have carried out the numerical integrations and present comparisons with the experiments in this dimensionless form.

### IV.2 Fit of the experimental results to the Garzó-Dufty hydrodynamic theory

In this section, we show fits of our experimental data to a formulation of granular hydrodynamics by Garzó and Dufty Garzó and Dufty (1999). This calculation is based on the “revised Enskog theory”, which is accurate for *elastic* fluids over a wide range of densities and is extended in Ref. Garzó and Dufty, 1999 to arbitrary values of the restitution coefficient $`ϵ`$. Some other theories of granular hydrodynamics are derived as expansions in powers of $`1ϵ^2`$ Sela and Goldhirsch (1998), and thus may only be accurate for $`ϵ1`$. On the other hand, the Garzó-Dufty theory makes the molecular chaos assumption that the pre-collision grain velocities are uncorrelated. Pre-collision velocity correlations are known to exist in inelastic hard-sphere fluids Soto et al. (2001); Pagonabarraga et al. (2001), and can be treated theoretically using “ring kinetic theory” van Noije et al. (1998).

It is doubtful whether fits to the present data could distinguish between these various hydrodynamic theories. We chose to compare our data to Ref. Garzó and Dufty, 1999 because this calculation is nominally valid for wide ranges of density and inelasticity, and because the theoretical results for $`f`$, $`P_c`$, $`\kappa `$ and $`\mu `$ are presented in an algebraic form convenient for numerical integration. In this theory the granular temperature is assumed to be isotropic, $`T_x=T_y=T_z`$, where $`T_i=mv_i^2`$, but it is not assumed that the velocity distribution is Gaussian. Experimentally we find modest differences (of order 20% or less) between the horizontal and vertical granular temperatures, $`T_{x,y}T_z`$, and more generalized formulations of hydrodynamics may be able to treat this anisotropy Sunthar and Kumaran (2000); Brey et al. (2001a); Dufty . For comparison with the isotropic-temperature theory the measured vertical temperature $`T_z`$ and horizontal temperature $`T_x`$ are averaged using $`T=\frac{1}{3}T_z+\frac{2}{3}T_x`$.

Figures 9 through 12 show a joint fit to the Garzó-Dufty theory of our data for three different values of the dimensionless bed height $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ and two different values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. For this fit the height of the sample bottom $`z_0`$ was allowed to be different for each data set, since the sample “floats” above the vibration center by an amount that depends upon the dynamic interplay between energy input and gravity (Fig. 3). Similarly, the energy input $`q_z^{}(0)`$ was a separate fitting parameter for each data set. Conversely a single value of the restitution coefficient $`ϵ`$ was used to fit all four data sets. Thus the only fitting parameters are $`z_0`$, $`q_z^{}(0)`$ and $`ϵ`$. All other quantities entering the fits shown in Figs. 9-12 are measured experimentally, including all of the axis variables in the figures.

The fitted value of the restitution coefficient is $`ϵ=0.87`$, in reasonable agreement with the approximate measurement described in Sec. II.2. The fitted values of the dimensionless heat flux at the sample bottom $`q_z^{}(0)`$ are listed in Table 1. The total power input is computed as $`P=(\pi D^2/4)q_z`$, where $`D=0.87`$ cm is the effective sample diameter (Appendix A). By equating the rate of momentum transfer to the total sample weight $`Nmg`$ the input power is rigorously related to the average over grain impacts of the container-bottom velocity $`v_i`$ by $`P=2Nmgv_i`$ McNamara and Luding (1998). Table 1 lists $`v_i`$ derived in this way from the fitted heat current, along with the ratio of $`v_i`$ to the peak container velocity $`v_0=\omega z_0`$.

The fitted power input $`q_z^{}(0)`$ is an increasing function of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, as expected on physical grounds. The power input also increases with bed depth $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$, which is expected from the momentum-balance argument, but the increase is very slow. One caveat is that these $`q_z^{}`$ values are derived from the hydrodynamic fits, which tend to fail where the density at the sample bottom is much less than the peak density (Figs. 10,12). In these cases particularly, the fitted $`q_x^{}`$ represents an *effective* power input reflecting the bottom boundary condition, which is greater than the *actual* power input because the hydrodynamic fit has larger granular temperature than the experimental data and hence greater collision losses in the lower part of the sample.

One robust conclusion from Table 1 is that the average container-grain impact velocity is much less than the peak container velocity, $`v_iv_0`$ (substituting the actual input power for the effective power only strengthens this result). This conclusion corresponds to the experimental observation that the sample “floats” above the vibrating container bottom (Fig. 3), so that most container-grain impacts occur near the top of the vibration stoke where the container velocity is much smaller than its peak value.

In both the data and the hydrodynamic fits in Figs. 9-12 there is a “temperature inversion”—the temperature increases with height near the free upper surface of the sample. In the hydrodynamic theory the heat flux is strictly upwards so the temperature inversion is only made possible by the term in $`\mu `$ in Eq. 7. The temperature inversion may be visible in some of the earliest experiments on quasi-two dimensional systems Clément and Rajchenbach (1991); Warr et al. (1995) and has been extensively discussed theoretically Soto et al. (1999); Brey et al. (2001b); Ramírez and Soto . The results presented here are perhaps the first demonstration that the temperature inversion in a physical system can be quantitatively explained by granular hydrodynamics.

## V Conclusions

One conclusion of this work is that it is possible, under certain conditions, to quantitatively model a physical vibrofluidized granular system using granular hydrodynamics. This is true despite the small sizes of the systems measured in grain diameters: the systems were small horizontally due to apparatus constraints, and in any case were necessarily small vertically in order to meet the fluidization condition $`X1`$. The overall success of the hydrodynamic description, demonstrated by the fits in Figs. 9-12, can probably be attributed to the fact that hydrodynamics only breaks down when the mean free path becomes much larger than other relevant length scales.

A limitation of present hydrodynamic theory is evident in these figures—the inability to accurately describe the complex process of energy transfer from the vibrating container bottom to the sample. The actual velocity distribution is highly skewed and anisotropic near the sample bottom (Fig. 6), and a discrepancy develops between the theoretical and measured granular temperatures when the vibrational power input is large enough to deplete the particle density near the sample bottom (Figs.10, 12).

To calculate the power input, typically it has been assumed that the mean free path is much larger than the vibration stroke, or that the vibration waveform is sawtooth or triangular McNamara and Luding (1998); Brey et al. (2001b). Such waveforms are unrealistic since they require infinite acceleration at the peak of the vibration stroke, which is precisely the point at which energy transfer to the grains occurs (Fig. 3). Similarly the mean free path is much *less* than the vibration stroke in the current experiments (Appendix B), which will be true in general for dense uniformly fluidized systems unless very high vibration frequencies are used. One possibility for deriving the power input might be to use *time-dependent* hydrodynamics to model the formation and dissipation of shocks, as in Ref. Bougie et al., 2002.

Thus it appears that current granular hydrodynamic theory can accurately describe the uniformly vibrofluidized state well away from the vibrating energy source, but that derivation of the time-averaged boundary condition for realistic vibration waveforms remains an unsolved problem. If that problem can be solved, a complete first-principles description of the vibrofluidized state applicable to real granular systems will be in hand.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by NSF Grant No. CTS 9980194. The authors thank N. Menon for useful discussions.

## Appendix A Horizontal density profiles and calibration of bed height

The hydrodynamic model to which we have fit our data assumes that all quantities depend only upon the height coordinate $`z`$. This is not strictly true due to boundary effects at the vertical wall, as demonstrated by previous experiments Wildman et al. (2001). The boundary condition also affects the effective cross sectional area of the sample tube, which is needed to compute the number of grain layers $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ for a given number of grains $`N`$. To address these issues we have taken some two-dimensional MRI data (Fig. 13) to examine the horizontal density profile of the vibrofluidized system,

$$p(x,z)=n(x,y,z)𝑑y.$$
(11)
If the NMR signal from each grain comes precisely from the grain center and the grain centers are uniformly distributed horizontally over a cylinder of diameter $`D`$, the profile has the form

$$p(x,z)=\{\begin{array}{cc}f(z)[1(2x/D)^2]^{1/2}\hfill & \text{if }x<D/2\text{,}\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise.}\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
We also considered the possibility that the NMR signal from a grain comes from a sphere of diameter $`\delta d`$, in which case the profile of Eq. 12 must be convoluted with the profile for a single grain. We find that the fitted sample diameter is not significantly changed by varying $`\delta `$ over the entire possible range, Fig. 13. In this figure some systematic deviation between the data and fit is visible, hinting that the density may be slightly depressed in the sample center Wildman et al. (2001). However, these data are too noisy to be directly inverted to yield the radial density profile. The fitted diameter is consistent with a constant value $`D=8.7`$ mm (Fig. 14). This is less than the actual inside diameter (9 mm) but by less than the grain diameter (1.84 mm), suggesting a slight density enhancement at the walls due to the dynamic boundary condition.

For the fits to the hydrodynamic theory, the height of the granular bed is specified by the dimensionless number density $`n_A^{}=n_Ad^2=Nd^2/(\pi D^2/4)`$. A second measure of the bed depth is the number of layers $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$, defined as the height of the bed at rest divided by the grain diameter. The value of $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ depends on the assumed volume filling fraction of the bed at rest $`\varphi _0`$ via $`N_{\mathrm{}}=(\pi /6\varphi _0)n_A^{}`$. For the $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$ values quoted in this paper, shown in Table 2, we have used $`\varphi _0=0.60`$ corresponding to a “loose random packing” Dullien (1992). It should be emphasized that the hydrodynamic fits are independent of the assumed value for $`\varphi _0`$, as they are based on $`n_A^{}`$ and not $`N_{\mathrm{}}`$.

## Appendix B The mean free path

For hydrodynamics to be valid, the mean free path $`\lambda `$ must not be too large relative to distances over which the hydrodynamic fields vary. Therefore it is important to estimate $`\lambda `$ for the experimental conditions, and this also provides a consistency check for the measured ballistic/diffusive crossover time. Extending the estimate of Ref. Grossman et al., 1997 to three dimensions gives

$$\lambda ^{}=\lambda /d=\frac{A(n_0^{}n^{})}{n^{}(Bn^{})}$$
(13)
where $`A`$ and $`B`$ are chosen to give the exact dilute limit $`\lambda ^{}=1/(\pi \sqrt{2}n^{})`$ for $`n^{}0`$ and the heuristic dense limit $`\lambda ^{}=(1n^{}/n_0^{})/3`$ for $`n^{}n_0^{}`$. Here $`n_0^{}=(6/\pi )\varphi _0`$ is the density at which the grains come into contact, which we arbitrarily assume occurs at the volume filling fraction for loose random packing $`\varphi _0=0.60`$.

The mean free path $`\lambda ^{}(n^{})`$ computed from Eq. 13 is shown in Fig. 15. At the peak density $`n^{}=0.85`$ that occurs in our experiments (Fig. 11), Eq. 13 gives $`\lambda ^{}0.1`$. Thus it is hardly surprising that the hydrodynamic theory can explain the spatial dependence of the density and granular temperature in the high-density regions of the sample. Conversely, the data fit the hydrodynamic theory well for densities extending below $`n^{}=0.1`$, which corresponds to $`\lambda ^{}>2`$. Thus, the theory continues to work for mean free paths comparable to or even somewhat greater than the scale over which the temperature and density change.

The mean free path calculation can also be used to check the consistency of observed the ballistic crossover time, Fig. 5. For example, the center panel in this figure corresponds to an average dimensionless height $`z^{}=5.2`$, and at this height the measured dimensionless density and temperature are $`n^{}=0.41`$, $`T^{}=0.5`$ (Fig. 9). Using $`\lambda =d\lambda ^{}(n^{})`$ and $`v_{\text{rms}}=(3T^{}gd)^{1/2}`$ we calculate Reif (1965) the ballistic to diffusive crossover time $`t_{\text{cr}}=(32/3\pi )^{1/2}\lambda /v_{\text{rms}}=6.3`$ ms, in excellent agreement with the observed value (Fig. 5).