Exceptionally dense and resilient critically jammed polydisperse disk packings

Abstract

Understanding the way disordered particle packings transition between jammed (rigid) and unjammed (fluid) states is of both great practical importance and strong fundamental interest. The values of critical packing fraction (and other state variables) at the jamming transition are protocol dependent. Here, we demonstrate that this variability can be systematically traced to structural measures of packing, as well as to energy measures inside the jammed regime. A novel generalized simultaneous particle swap algorithm constructs overjammed states of desired energy, which upon decompression lead to predictable critical packing fractions. Thus, for a given set of particle sizes, states with extraordinarily high critical packing fractions can be found efficiently, which sustain substantial shear strain and preserve their special structure over the entire jammed domain. The close relation revealed here between the energy landscape of overjammed soft-particle packings and the behavior near the jamming transition points towards new ways of understanding and constructing disordered materials with exceptional properties.