Inferring the particle-wise dynamics of amorphous solids from the local structure at the jamming point

Abstract

Jamming is a phenomenon shared by a wide variety of systems, such as granular materials, foams, and glasses in their high density regime. This has motivated the development of a theoretical framework capable of explaining many of their static critical properties with a unified approach. However the dynamics occurring in the vicinity of the jamming point has received little attention and the problem of finding a connection with the local structure of the configuration remains unexplored. Here we address this issue by constructing physically well defined structural variables using the information contained in the network of contacts of jammed configurations, and then showing that such variables yield a resilient statistical description of the particle-wise dynamics near this critical point. Our results are based on extensive numerical simulations of systems of spherical particles that allow us to statistically characterize the trajectories of individual particles in terms of their first two moments. We first demonstrate that, besides displaying a broad distribution of mobilities, particles may also have preferential directions of motion. Next, we associate each of these features with a structural variable computed uniquely in terms of the contact vectors at jamming, obtaining considerably high statistical correlations. The robustness of our approach is confirmed by testing two types of dynamical protocols, namely Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo, with different types of interaction. We also provide evidence that the dynamical regime we study here is dominated by anharmonic effects and therefore it cannot be described properly in terms of vibrational modes. Finally, we show that correlations decay slowly and in an interaction-independent fashion, suggesting a universal rate of information loss.

Same as published version; better figures placement

References in corpus (22)

• Theoretical perspective on the glass transition and amorphous materials
• Jamming at Zero Temperature and Zero Applied Stress: the Epitome of Disorder
• Fractal free energy landscapes in structural glasses
• The role of local structure in dynamical arrest
• Irreversible reorganization in a supercooled liquid originates from localised soft modes
• Identifying structural flow defects in disordered solids using machine learning methods
• Packing Hyperspheres in High-Dimensional Euclidean Spaces
• Marginal Stability in Structural, Spin and Electron Glasses
• Jamming Criticality Revealed by Removing Localized Buckling Excitations
• The Relationship Between Local Structure and Relaxation in Out-of-Equilibrium Glassy Systems
• Structure and dynamics in glass-formers: predictability at large length scales
• Critical scaling and heterogeneous superdiffusion across the jamming/rigidity transition of a granular glass
• Exact theory of dense amorphous hard spheres in high dimension. I. The free energy
• Robust Algorithm to Generate a Diverse Class of Dense Disordered and Ordered Sphere Packings via Linear Programming
• Heterogeneous Dynamics, Marginal Stability and Soft Modes in Hard Sphere Glasses
• Dynamic criticality at the jamming transition
• Predicting plasticity with soft vibrational modes: from dislocations to glasses
• Non-Universality of Density and Disorder in Jammed Sphere Packings
• Elementary Excitation Modes in a Granular Glass above Jamming
• Anisotropic Structural Predictor in Glassy Materials
• Vibrational properties of hard and soft spheres are unified at jamming
• The response of jammed packings to thermal fluctuations

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Finite size effects in the microscopic critical properties of jammed configurations: A comprehensive study of the effects of different types of disorder
• Correlation of plastic events with local structure in jammed packings across spatial dimensions
• Collective drifts in vibrated granular packings: the interplay of friction and structure
• Hard-Sphere Jamming through the Lens of Linear Optimization