Kim Sangwoo, Hilgenfeldt Sascha
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-5070, USA.
Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Oct 14;129(16):168001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.168001.
Jammed, disordered packings of given sets of particles possess a multitude of equilibrium states with different mechanical properties. Identifying and constructing desired states, e.g., of superior stability, is a complex task. Here, we show that in two-dimensional particle packings the energy of all metastable states (inherent structures) is reliably classified by simple scalar measures of local steric packing. These structural measures are insensitive to the particle interaction potential and so robust that they can be used to guide a modified swap algorithm that anneals polydisperse packings toward low-energy metastable states exceptionally fast. The low-energy states are extraordinarily stable against applied shear, so that the approach also efficiently identifies ultrastable packings.
