  Motivated by recent experiments reporting non-Gaussian velocity distributions
in driven dilute granular materials, we study by numerical simulation the
properties of 2D inelastic gases. We find theoretically that the form of the
observed velocity distribution is governed primarily by the coefficient of
restitution $\eta$ and $q=N_H/N_C$, the ratio between the average number of
heatings and the average number of collisions in the gas. The differences in
distributions we find between uniform and boundary heating can then be
understood as different limits of $q$, for $q \gg 1$ and $q \lesssim 1$
respectively.

Soft Condensed Matter;Statistical Mechanics