Collisional Cooling of a Charged Granular Medium

FB 10, Theoretische Physik, Gerhard–Mercator–Universit¨at Duisburg, 47048 Duisburg, Germany(April 6, 1999)The dissipation rate due to inelastic collisions betweenequally charged, insulating particles in a dilute granularmedium is calculated. It is equal to the known dissipation ratefor uncharged granular media multiplied by a Boltzmann-likefactor, that originates from Coulomb interactions. We includeparticle correlations byintroducing an effective potential, thatreplaces the bare Coulomb potential in the Boltzmann factor.All results are confirmed by computer simulations.