The kinetic theory of granular gases is studied for spatially homogeneous systems. At large velocities, the equation governing the velocity distribution becomes linear, and it admits stationary solutions with a power-law tail, f(v)∼v−σ. This behavior holds in arbitrary dimension for arbitrary collision rates including both hard spheres and Maxwell molecules. Numerical simulations show that driven steady states with the same power-law tail can be realized by injecting energy into the system at very high energies. In one dimension, we also obtain self-similar time-dependent solutions where the velocities collapse to zero. At small velocities there is a steady state and a power-law tail but at large velocities, the behavior is time dependent with a stretched exponential decay.
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