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Phases of Granular Matter

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Abstract

An understanding of homogeneous nucleation of crystalline structure from a disordered medium such as a liquid remains an important unsolved problem in condensed matter physics. Guided by the results from a number of experiments on granular and colloidal systems in the past two decades, including in particular observations of homogeneous nucleation in colloidal and granular systems, we suggest an alternative to the statistical mechanics approach to static granular matter initiated by Edwards and Oakeshott in 1989.

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Acknowledgements

One of the authors (Harry Swinney) acknowledges with pleasure the influence of Pierre Hohenberg, who is being remembered by the publication of this special memorial issue of the Journal of Statistical Physics. In the period 1971–1973 Pierre Hohenberg was a regular visitor in the physics department at New York University, where Harry was an assistant professor who was conducting light scattering studies of critical phenomena in fluids. Regular discussions with Pierre were particularly helpful in interpreting data for the decay rate of order parameter fluctuations near critical points. In the following decades there were many lively discussions where Pierre guided Harry in the interpretation of laboratory data in terms of statistical theory.

The authors of this paper acknowledge many lively and productive discussions with Matthias Schroeter, who initiated together with Frank Rietz and the authors the experiment at the University of Texas that motivated the present manuscript. The results presented in Rietz et al. [6] were subsequently obtained at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen, where Schroeter and Rietz developed a much improved apparatus. The authors also thank Eric Weeks for helpful discussions about the experiments on nucleation in colloidal systems. Radin acknowledges the support of NSF Grant DMS-1509088, and Swinney acknowledges the support of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Charles Radin

  2. Department of Physics and Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Harry L. Swinney

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  1. Charles Radin
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Correspondence to Charles Radin.

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Radin, C., Swinney, H.L. Phases of Granular Matter. J Stat Phys 175, 542–553 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-018-2144-4

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