2007/02/28 by Allison Ferguson, Bulbul Chakraborty, Ferguson, Allison +1
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Material Dynamics and Properties #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Sports Dynamics and Biomechanics #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0702671
6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Europhys. Lett
arxiv created 2007/02/28 · openalex publication_date 2007/02/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Interest in the dynamical arrest leading to a fluid --> solid transition in thermal and athermal systems has led to questions about the nature of these transitions. These jamming transitions may be dependent on the influence of extended structures on the dynamics of the system. Here we show results from a simple driven, dissipative, non-equilibrium system which exhibits dynamical heterogeneities similar to those observed in a supercooled liquid which is a system in thermal equilibrium. Observations of the time τR(r) required for a particular particle to move a distance r reveal the existence of large-scale correlated dynamical regions with characteristic timescales chosen from a broad distribution. The mean squared displacement of ensembles of particles with varying characteristic τR(r) reveals an intriguing spatially heterogenous mobility. This suggests that a unified framework for jamming will have to be based on the connection between the nature of these heterogeneities and the effective dynamics.