title: Microscopic mean-field theory of the jamming transition.
abstract: Dense particle packings acquire rigidity through a nonequilibrium jamming transition commonly observed in materials from emulsions to sandpiles. We describe athermal packings and their observed geometric phase transitions by using equilibrium statistical mechanics and develop a fully microscopic, mean-field theory of the jamming transition for soft repulsive spherical particles. We derive analytically some of the scaling laws and exponents characterizing the transition and obtain new predictions for microscopic correlation functions of jammed states that are amenable to experimental verifications and whose accuracy we confirm by using computer simulations.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, UMR CNRS 7057, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, 10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet, 75205 Paris cedex 13, France.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jacquin
authors.forename: Ludovic
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Berthier
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zamponi