Superheating in Granular Matter

Some materials remain solids even if they are heated beyond the temperature of their melting points. In condensed matter physics, this rare phenomenon is called superheating. Here we report the analogous phenomenon in granular matter: a strongly vibrated monolayer that instead of being a gas persists as a crystal for some time. Eventually, it spontaneously evaporates. We found that the system has thermodynamiclike features like coexistence and metastability. We show how the observed metastable phase is linked to energy dissipation.