Capillarylike fluctuations of a solid-liquid interface in a noncohesive granular system.

One of the most noticeable collective motion of noncohesive granular matter is clustering under certain conditions. In particular, when a quasi-two-dimensional monolayer of monodispersed noncohesive particles is vertically vibrated, a solid-liquid-like transition occurs when the driving amplitude exceeds a critical value. Here the physical mechanism underlying particle clustering relies on the strong interactions mediated by grain collisions, rather than on grain-grain cohesive forces. In average, the solid cluster resembles a drop, with a striking circular shape. We experimentally investigate the coarse-grained solid-liquid interface fluctuations, which are characterized through the static and dynamic correlation functions in the Fourier space. These fluctuations turn out to be well described by the capillary wave theory, which allows us to measure the solid-liquid interface surface tension and mobility once the granular "thermal" kinetic energy is determined. Despite that the system is strongly out of equilibrium and that the granular temperature is not uniform, there is energy equipartition at the solid-liquid interface, for a relatively large range of angular wave numbers. Furthermore, both surface tension and mobility are consistent with a simple order of magnitude estimation considering the characteristic energy, length, and time scales, which is very similar to what can be done for atomic systems.