English

Topological boundary modes in jammed matter

Soft Condensed Matter 2016-06-24 v2

Abstract

Granular matter at the jamming transition is poised on the brink of mechanical stability, and hence it is possible that these random systems have topologically protected surface phonons. Studying two model systems for jammed matter, we find states that exhibit distinct mechanical topological classes, protected surface modes, and ubiquitous Weyl points. The detailed statistics of the boundary modes enable tests of a standard understanding of the detailed features of the jamming transition, and show that parts of this argument are invalid.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.04480,
  title  = {Topological boundary modes in jammed matter},
  author = {Daniel M. Sussman and Olaf Stenull and T. C. Lubensky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.04480},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages; 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:09:29.060Z