Mesoscopic Theory of Granular Fluids

Using fluctuating hydrodynamics we describe the slow buildup of long range spatial correlations in a freely evolving fluid of inelastic hard spheres. In the incompressible limit, the behavior of spatial velocity correlations (including r^-d behavior) is governed by vorticity fluctuations only and agrees well with two-dimensional simulations up to 50 to 100 collisions per particle. The incompressibility assumption breaks down beyond a distance that diverges in the elastic limit.