Ref HAL: hal-00553505_v1
Ref Arxiv: 1011.5637
DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/2011/01/P01004
WoS: 000286629000007
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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5 Citations
Résumé:

When materials such as foams or emulsions are compressed, they display solid behaviour above the so-called 'jamming' transition. Because compression is done out-of-equilibrium in the absence of thermal fluctuations, jamming appears as a new kind of a nonequilibrium phase transition. In this proceeding paper, we suggest that tools from equilibrium statistical mechanics can in fact be used to describe many specific features of the jamming transition. Our strategy is to introduce thermal fluctuations and use statistical mechanics to describe the complex phase behaviour of systems of soft repulsive particles, before sending temperature to zero at the end of the calculation. We show that currently available implementations of standard tools such as integral equations, mode-coupling theory, or replica calculations all break down at low temperature and large density, but we suggest that new analytical schemes can be developed to provide a fully microscopic, quantitative description of the jamming transition.

Commentaires: 8 pages, 6 figs. Talk presented at Statphys24 (July 2010, Cairns, Australia)