An intermediate phase between jammed and un-jammed amorphous solids
Abstract
A significant amount of attention was dedicated in recent years to the phenomenon of jamming of athermal amorphous solids by increasing the volume fraction of the microscopic constituents. At a critical value of the volume fraction, pressure shoots up from zero to finite values with a host of critical exponents discovered and discussed. In this letter, we advance evidence for the existence of a second transition, within the jammed state of two-dimensional granular systems, that separates two phases characterized by different mechanical screening regimes. Explicitly, highly packed systems are quasi-elastic with quadrupole-screening, and more loosely jammed systems exhibit anomalous mechanics with dipole screening. Evidence is given for a clear transition between these two regimes, reminiscent of the intermediate hexatic phase of crystal melting in two-dimensional crystals.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2305.01394,
title = {An intermediate phase between jammed and un-jammed amorphous solids},
author = {Yuliang Jin and Itamar Procaccia and Tuhin Samanta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.01394},
year = {2023}
}