We study the kinetic theory of driven and undriven granular gases, taking into account both translational and rotational degrees
of freedom. We obtain the high-energy tail of the stationary bivariate energy distribution, depending on the total energy
E and the ratio
x=Ö{Ew/E}x=\sqrt{E_{w}/E}
of rotational energy
E
w
to total energy. Extremely energetic particles have a unique and well-defined distribution
f(
x) which has several remarkable features:
x is not uniformly distributed as in molecular gases;
f(
x) is not smooth but has multiple singularities. The latter behavior is sensitive to material properties such as the collision
parameters, the moment of inertia and the collision rate. Interestingly, there are preferred ratios of rotational-to-total
energy. In general,
f(
x) is strongly correlated with energy and the deviations from a uniform distribution grow with energy. We also solve for the
energy distribution of freely cooling Maxwell Molecules and find qualitatively similar behavior.
Keywords Granular materials - Kinetic theory - Nonequilibrium statistical physics - Energy distribution - Rotation