Related papers: Quantifying `local softness' in a simple liquid
The dynamics of supercooled liquids slow down and become increasingly heterogeneous as they are cooled. Recently, local structural variables identified using machine learning, such as "softness", have emerged as predictors of local…
We introduce a new measure of the structure of a liquid which is the softness of the mean-field potential developed by us earlier. We find that this softness is sensitive to small changes in the structure. We then study its correlation with…
The transition of a fluid to a rigid glass upon cooling is a common route of transformation from liquid to solid that embodies the most poorly understood features of both phases1,2,3. From the liquid perspective, the puzzle is to understand…
We find that the hierarchical organization of the potential energy landscape in a model supercooled liquid can be related to a change in the spatial distribution of soft normal modes. For groups of nearby minima, between which fast…
In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…
Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is examined via vulcanization theory. The spatial heterogeneity in the \emph{structure} of soft random solids is a result of the fluctuations locked-in at their…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
In a recent study by some of us, we have proposed a new measure of the structure of a liquid, the softness of the mean-field caging potential, and shown that it can describe the temperature dependence of the dynamics. In this work, we put…
From hydrogels and plastics to liquid crystals, soft solids cover a wide array of synthetic and biological materials that play key enabling roles in advanced technologies such as 3D printing, soft robotics, wearable electronics,…
We study the solid-to-liquid transition in a two-dimensional fully periodic soft-glassy model with an imposed spatially heterogeneous stress. The model we consider consists of droplets of a dispersed phase jammed together in a continuous…
Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is investigated via a two-pronged approach. First, a nonlocal phenomenological model for the elastic free energy is examined. This features a quenched random kernel,…
Thermo-elasticity couples the deformation of an elastic (solid) body to its temperature and vice-versa. It is a solid-like property. Highlighting such property in liquids is a paradigm shift: it requires long-range collective interactions…
We propose an approach to measure surface elastic constants of soft solids. Generally, this requires one to probe interfacial mechanics at around the elastocapillary length scale, which is typically microscopic. Deformations of microscopic…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…
Using computer simulations, we show that the localized low frequency normal modes of a configuration in a supercooled liquid are strongly correlated with the irreversible structural reorganization of the particles within that configuration.…
The plasticity of amorphous solids undergoing shear is characterized by quasi-localized rearrangements of particles. While many models of plasticity exist, the precise relationship between plastic dynamics and the structure of a particle's…
We monitor the transformation of a liquid into an amorphous solid in simulations of a glass forming liquid by measuring the variation of a structural order parameter with either changing temperature or potential energy to establish the…
Super-cooled liquids are characterized by their fragility: the slowing down of the dynamics under cooling is more sudden and the jump of specific heat at the glass transition is generally larger in fragile liquids than in strong ones.…
Strongly interacting, dynamically disordered and with no small parameter, liquids took a theoretical status between gases and solids. We review different approaches to liquids and propose that liquids do not need classifying in terms of…
We discuss the spatiotemporal behavior of local density and its relation to dynamical heterogeneity in a highly supercooled liquid by using molecular dynamics simulations of a binary mixture with different particle sizes in two dimensions.…