Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 22: 151-155
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/e2007-00022-1

Regular Articles

Well defined transition to gel–like aggregates of attractive athermal particles

Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo, Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

^* e-mail: head.david@nims.go.jp

Received: 5 January 2007
Published online: 22 March 2007

Abstract

In an attempt to extend the range of model jamming transitions, we simulate systems of athermal particles which attract when slightly overlapping. Following from recent work on purely repulsive systems, dynamics are neglected and relaxation performed via a potential energy minimisation algorithm. Our central finding is of a transition to a low-density tensile solid which is sharp in the limit of infinite system size. The critical density depends on the range of the attractive regime in the pair-potential. Furthermore, solidity is shown to be related to the coordination number of the packing according to the approximate constraint-counting scheme known as Maxwell counting, although more corrections need to be considered than with the repulsive-only case, as explained. We finish by discussing how the numerical difficulties encountered in this work could be overcome in future studies.