Related papers: Volume fluctuations and linear response in a simpl…
A theory recently proposed by the author aims to explain decoherence and the thermodynamical behaviour of closed systems within a conservative, unitary, framework for quantum gravity by assuming that the operators tied to the gravitational…
We review a recently proposed theory of random packings. We describe the volume fluctuations in jammed matter through a volume function, amenable to analytical and numerical calculations. We combine an extended statistical mechanics…
The position of a colloidal particle trapped in an external field thermally fluctuates at equilibrium. As is well known, the ambient fluid is not a simple heat bath and the particle mass appears to increase, which influences the mean square…
This paper is the fourth in a series exploring the physical consequences of the solidity of highly viscous liquids. It is argued that the two basic characteristics of a flow event (a jump between two energy minima in configuration space)…
The aim of this report is to review a theoretical approach that has been proposed recently to describe dynamic fluctuations in glassy systems (work in collaboration with H. Castillo, C. Chamon, P. Charbonneau, J. L. Iguain, M. Kennett, D.…
We investigate a stochastic model describing a column of grains in the jamming limit, in the presence of a low vibrational intensity. The key control parameter of the model, $\epsilon$, is a representation of granular shape, related to the…
We show the existence of intermittent dynamics in one of the simplest model of a glassy system: the two-state model, which has been used to explain the origin of the violation of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. The dynamics is analyzed…
The dynamics of a one-dimensional stochastic model is studied in presence of an absorbing boundary. The distribution of fluctuations is analytically characterized within the generalized van Kampen expansion, accounting for higher order…
We study the role of fluctuations in particle systems modeled by Dean-Kawasaki-type equations, which describe the evolution of particle densities in systems with Brownian motion. By comparing microscopic simulations, stochastic partial…
Structural organization and correlations are studied in very large packings of equally sized acrylic spheres, reconstructed in three-dimensions by means of X-ray computed tomography. A novel technique, devised to analyze correlations among…
A system is glassy when the observation time is much smaller than the equilibration time. A unifying thermodynamic picture of the glassy state is presented. Slow configurational modes are in quasi-equilibrium at an effective temperature. It…
Formulating a statistical mechanics for granular matter remains a significant challenge, in part, due to the difficulty associated with a complete characterization of the systems under study. We present a fully characterized model of a…
The isothermal compressibility of an interacting or non interacting system may be extracted from the fluctuations of the number of particles in a well chosen control volume. Finite size effects are prevalent and should then be accounted for…
The thermodynamics of hot and dense matter created in heavy-ion collision experiments are usually studied as a system of infinite volume. Here we report on possible effects for considering a finite system size for such matter in the…
A model for the dynamical evolution of a granular binary mixture is analyzed. This system is submitted to a tapping procedure, similarly to what is done in real experiments. In the weak vibration limit, an effective dynamics for the tapping…
The notion of longitudinal effective temperature and its relation with the Edwards compactivity are investigated in an abstract lattice gas model of granular material compacting under gravity and weak thermal vibration.
Driven suspensions, where energy is input at a particle scale, are a framework for understanding general principles of out-of-equilibrium organization. A large number of simple interacting units can give rise to non-trivial structure and…
Granular materials, such as sand or grain, exhibit many structural and dynamic characteristics similar to those observed in molecular systems, despite temperature playing no role in their properties. This has led to an effort to develop a…
We investigate experimentally the statistics of the free volume inside bidimensional granular packings, for two different kinds of grains and two levels of compaction. With the aim to gain new insight into the statistical description of…
Two models are presented to study the influence of slow dynamics on granular compaction. It is found in both cases that high values of packing fraction are achieved only by the slow relaxation of cooperative structures. Ongoing work to…