title: Similarity of wet granular packing to gels.
abstract: To date, there is still no general consensus on the fundamental principle that governs glass transition. Colloidal suspensions are ordinarily utilized as model systems to study the dynamical arrest mechanisms in glass or gels. Here, we tackle the problem using athermal granular particles. Slow dynamics and structural evolution of granular packing upon tapping are monitored by fast X-ray tomography. When the packing are wet and short-range attractive interactions exist, we find a large amount of locally favoured structures with fivefold symmetry, which bear great structural similarity to colloidal gels. In addition, these structures are almost absent in dry packing with similar packing fractions. The study leads strong support for the geometrical frustration mechanism for dynamic arrest in both thermal and athermal systems with attractive interactions. It also suggests nontrivial structural mechanism, if exists, for dynamic arrest in systems with purely repulsive interactions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Jindong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Yixin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Chengjie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Binquan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kou
authors.affiliation: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA.
authors.forename: Xianghui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA.
authors.forename: Kamel
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fezzaa
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Yujie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang