Critical scaling of a jammed system after a quench of temperature

Granular piston-probing in microgravity: powder compression, from densification to jamming

The macroscopic response of granular solids is determined by the microscopic fabric of force chains, which, in turn, is intimately linked to the history of the solid. To query the influence of gravity on powder flow behavior, a granular material is subjected to compression by a piston in a closed container, on-ground and in microgravity (on parabolic flights). Results show that piston-probing densifies the packing, eventually leading to jamming of the material compressed by the piston, regardless of the gravitational environment. The onset of jamming is found to appear at lower packing fraction in microgravity ([Formula: see text]) than on-ground ([Formula: see text]). We interpret these findings as the manifestation of a granular fabric altered by the gravitational force field: in absence of a secondary load (due to gravitational acceleration) to stimulate reorganization in a different direction to the major compression stress, the particles' configuration becomes stable at lower density, as the particles have no external drive to promote reorganization into a denser packing. This is coupled with a change in interparticular force balance which takes place under low gravity, as cohesive interactions become predominant. We propose a combination of microscopic and continuum arguments to rationalize our results.

Insights from Single-File Diffusion into Cooperativity in Higher Dimensions

Diffusion in colloidal suspensions can be very slow due to the cage effect, which confines each particle within a short radius on one hand, and involves large-scale cooperative motions on the other. In search of insight into this cooperativity, here the authors develop a formalism to calculate the displacement correlation in colloidal systems, mainly in the two-dimensional (2D) case. To clarify the idea for it, studies are reviewed on cooperativity among the particles in the one-dimensional (1D) case, i.e. the single-file diffusion (SFD). As an improvement over the celebrated formula by Alexander and Pincus on the mean-square displacement (MSD) in SFD, it is shown that the displacement correlation in SFD can be calculated from Lagrangian correlation of the particle interval in the one-dimensional case, and also that the formula can be extended to higher dimensions. The improved formula becomes exact for large systems. By combining the formula with a nonlinear theory for correlation, a correction to the asymptotic law for the MSD in SFD is obtained. In the 2D case, the linear theory gives description of vortical cooperative motion.

How the ideal jamming point illuminates the world of granular media

The zero temperature properties of frictionless soft spheres near the jamming point have been extensively studied both numerically and theoretically; these studies provide a reliable base for the interpretation of experiments. However, recent work by Ikeda et al. showed that, in a parameter space of the temperature and packing fraction, experiments to date on colloids have been rather far from the theoretical scaling regime. An important question is then whether theoretical results concerning point-J are applicable to any physical/experimental system, including granular media, which we consider here. On the surface, such a-thermal, frictional systems might appear even further from the idealized case of thermal soft spheres. In this work we address this question via experiments on shaken granular materials near jamming. We have systematically investigated such systems over a number of years using hard metallic grains. The important feature of the present work is the use of much softer grains, cut from photoelastic materials, making it possible to determine forces at the grain scale, the details of the contact networks and the motion of individual grains. Using this new type of particle, we first show that the contact network exhibits remarkable dynamics. We find strong heterogeneities, which are maximum at the packing fraction ϕ*, distinct from and smaller than the packing fraction ϕ(†), where the average number of contacts per particle, z, starts to increase. In the limit of zero mechanical excitation, these two packing fractions converge at point J. We also determine dynamics on time scales ranging from a small fraction of the shaking cycle to thousands of cycles. We can then map the observed system behavior onto results from simulations of ideal thermal soft spheres. Our results indicate that the ideal jamming point indeed illuminates the world of granular media.

Athermal jamming versus thermalized glassiness in sheared frictionless particles

Numerical simulations of soft-core frictionless disks in two dimensions are carried out to study the behavior of a simple liquid as a function of temperature T, packing fraction φ, and uniform applied shear strain rate γ[over ·]. Inferring the hard-core limit from our soft-core results, we find that it depends on the two parameters φ and T/γ[over ·]. Here T/γ[over ·]→0 defines the athermal limit in which a shear-driven jamming transition occurs at a well defined φ(J) and T/γ[over ·]→∞ defines the thermalized limit where an equilibrium glass transition may take place at φ(G). This conclusion argues that athermal jamming and equilibrium glassy behavior are not controlled by the same critical point. Preliminary results suggest φ(G)<φ(J).

Observation and characterization of the vestige of the jamming transition in a thermal three-dimensional system

We study the dependence on the packing fraction of the pair-correlation function g(r) and particle mobility in a dense three-dimensional packing of soft colloids made of poly N-isopropyl acrylamide (pNIPAM), a thermosensitive gel. We find that g(r) for our samples is qualitatively like that of a liquid at all packing fractions. There is a peak in g(1), the height of the first peak of g(r), as a function of the packing fraction. This peak is identified as a vestige, which remains at finite temperature, of the divergence found at the jamming transition in simulations of soft frictionless spheres at zero temperature. As the density is increased, the particle dynamics slow down and near the packing fraction where there is a peak in g(1) the particles become arrested on the time scale of the experiment.