Differences in plasticity between hard and soft spheres

Physical Review Research, vol. 2

Abstract

This paper shows that soft and hard spheres exhibit qualitatively and quantitatively different behavior under shear. These differences occur because the network of contacts in hard spheres changes precisely when the system traverses a saddle point, while contact changes are much more frequent in soft spheres. Moreover, the scaling relations associated with nonlinear saddle points in soft spheres are similar to scaling relations found previously for the linear response of soft spheres.

Authors 5

1. Peter K. Morse

   Syracuse University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA

2. Sven Wijtmans

   Syracuse University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA

3. Merlijn van Deen Aachen Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Lab

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Lab, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9504, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

4. Martin van Hecke Aachen Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Lab

   Leiden University · Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics

   Affiliation as printed

   AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands

   Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Lab, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9504, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

5. M. Lisa Manning

   Syracuse University

   Affiliation as printed

   BioInspired Institute, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA

   Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA