Are granular charge distributions really non-Gaussian?

Measurements have shown that charge distributions of grains comprised of the same material are non-Gaussian, which seem to imply that the underlying charge transfer process defies the central limit theorem. However, such measurements are largely made with a single experimental technique, videographic particle tracking, and common sources of error that may affect the shape of distributions---especially at tails where data is sparse---have not been considered. In this article, we show that the shape of such gathered distributions is sensitive to the field at which it is measured; distributions measured at low (high) fields have larger (smaller) tails. We reveal that this is a signal to noise issue, generating synthetic data and subjecting it to the same sources of noise to recreate such broadening in silico. Testing whether or not we can recreate experimentally measured distributions by broadening an underlying Gaussian distribution, we find we cannot. Testing the same for a charge distribution from experiments recovered at high fields, we find correspondence. Our results confirm that granular charge distributions are non-Gaussian, but that the precise shape can only be determined at sufficiently large fields.