Related papers: Edwards' measures: a thermodynamic construction fo…
Can one construct a thermodynamics for compact, slowly moving powders and grains? A few years ago, Edwards proposed a possible step in this direction, raising the fascinating perspective that such systems have a statistical mechanics of…
We discuss a theoretical approach to structural glasses as they happen in real situations. Older ideas based on `configurational entropy', on `fictive temperatures' and on Edwards' `compactivity' are sharpened and unified in an out of…
We consider a Statistical Mechanics approach to granular systems by following the original ideas developed by Edwards. We use the concept of ``inherent states'', defined as the stable configurations in the potential energy landscape,…
I briefly describe how mean-field glass models can be extended to the case in which the bath and friction are non-thermal, thus promoting them to granular matter mean-field caricatures. Solving their dynamics one discovers a temperature…
Years ago Edwards proposed a thermodynamic description of dense granular matter, in which the grains (the `atoms' of the system) interact with inelastic forces. The approach is intriguing but is not justified from first principles, and…
Using X-ray tomography, we experimentally investigate granular segregation phenomena in a mixture of particles with different densities under quasi-static cyclic shear. We quantitatively characterize their height distributions at steady…
We develop a theory of the effective disorder temperature in glass-forming materials driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium by external forces. Our basic premise is that the slow configurational degrees of freedom of such materials are…
By detailed Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations %of a realistic model we show that granular materials at rest can be described as thermodynamics systems. First we show that granular packs can be characterized by few parameters,…
The present paper proposes a Statistical Mechanics approach to the inherent states of glassy systems and granular materials, following the original ideas developed by Edwards for granular materials. Two lattice models, a diluted Spin Glass…
By means of a simple model system, the total volume fluctuations of a tapped granular material in the steady state are studied. In the limit of a system with a large number of particles, they are found to be Gaussian distributed, and…
These lecture notes cover the statics and glassy dynamics of granular media. Most of the lectures were in fact devoted to `force propagation' models. We discuss the experimental and theoretical motivations for these approaches, and their…
We analyse the connections between structure and dynamics in two model glass-formers, using the mutual information between an initial configuration and the ensuing dynamics to compare the predictive value of different structural…
A scenario for systems with slow dynamics is characterised by stating that there are several temperatures coexisting in the sample, with a single temperature shared by all observables at each (widely separate) time-scale. In preparation for…
In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium statistical mechanics, despite their inherent athermal…
A densely packed granular system is an example of an out-of-equilibrium system in the jammed state. It has been a longstanding problem to determine whether this class of systems can be described by concepts arising from equilibrium…
The mechanical properties of a disordered heterogeneous medium depend, in general, on a complex interplay between multiple length scales. Connecting local interactions to macroscopic observables, such as stiffness or fracture, is thus…
An analysis of the dynamics is performed, of exactly solvable models for fragile and strong glasses, exploiting the partitioning of the free energy landscape in inherent structures. The results are compared with the exact solution of the…
We analyze in details how the anomalous drift and diffusion properties of a particle evolving in an aging medium can be interpreted in terms of an effective temperature of the medium. From an experimental point of view, independent…
The study of spin-glass dynamics, long considered the paradigmatic complex system, has reached important milestones. The availability of single crystals has allowed the experimental measurement of spin-glass coherence lengths of almost…
We discuss a Statistical Mechanics approach in the manner of Edwards to the ``inherent states'' (defined as the stable configurations in the potential energy landscape) of glassy systems and granular materials. We show that at stationarity…