SciPost Phys. 3, 027 (2017) ·
published 12 October 2017
|
· pdf
We numerically study the jamming transition of frictionless polydisperse
spheres in three dimensions. We use an efficient thermalisation algorithm for
the equilibrium hard sphere fluid and generate amorphous jammed packings over a
range of critical jamming densities that is about three times broader than in
previous studies. This allows us to reexamine a wide range of structural
properties characterizing the jamming transition. Both isostaticity and the
critical behavior of the pair correlation function hold over the entire range
of jamming densities. At intermediate length scales, we find a weak, smooth
increase of bond orientational order. By contrast, distorted icosahedral
structures grow rapidly with increasing the volume fraction in both fluid and
jammed states. Surprisingly, at large scale we observe that denser jammed
states show stronger deviations from hyperuniformity, suggesting that the
enhanced amorphous ordering inherited from the equilibrium fluid competes with,
rather than enhances, hyperuniformity. Finally, finite size fluctuations of the
critical jamming density are considerably suppressed in the denser jammed
states, indicating an important change in the topography of the potential
energy landscape. By considerably stretching the amplitude of the critical
"J-line", our work disentangles physical properties at the contact scale that
are associated with jamming criticality, from those occurring at larger length
scales, which have a different nature.
