We analyse the steady state regime of a one dimensional Ising model under a
tapping dynamics recently introduced by analogy with the dynamics of
mechanically perturbed granular media. The idea that the steady state regime
may be described by a flat measure over metastable states of fixed energy is
tested by comparing various steady state time averaged quantities in extensive
numerical simulations with the corresponding ensemble averages computed
analytically with this flat measure. The agreement between the two averages is
excellent in all the cases examined, showing that a static approach is capable
of predicting certain measurable properties of the steady state regime.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure