Far-from-equilibrium Ostwald ripening in electrostatically driven granular powders

We report the first experimental study of cluster size distributions in electrostatically driven granular submonolayers. The cluster size distribution in this far-from-equilibrium process exhibits dynamic scaling behavior characteristic of the (nearly equilibrium) Ostwald ripening, controlled by the attachment and detachment of the "gas" particles. The scaled size distribution, however, is different from the classical Wagner distribution obtained in the limit of a vanishingly small area fraction of the clusters. A much better agreement is found with the theory of Conti et al. [Phys. Rev. E 65, 046117 (2002)] which accounts for the cluster merger.