Edwards Statistical Mechanics for Jammed Granular Matter

Abstract

In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium statistical mechanics, despite their inherent athermal features. Since then, the statistical mechanics approach for jammed matter has garnered an extraordinary amount of attention by both theorists and experimentalists. Here, we review a systematic approach to jammed matter based on the Edwards statistical mechanical ensemble. We discuss the construction of microcanonical and canonical ensembles based on the volume function, which replaces the Hamiltonian in jammed systems. The importance of approximation schemes at various levels is emphasized leading to quantitative predictions for ensemble averaged quantities such as packing fractions and contact force distributions. An overview of the phenomenology of jammed states and experiments, simulations, and theoretical models scrutinizing the strong assumptions underlying Edwards' approach is given including recent results suggesting the validity of Edwards ergodic hypothesis for jammed states. A theoretical framework for packings whose constitutive particles range from spherical to non-spherical shapes like dimers, polymers, ellipsoids, spherocylinders or tetrahedra, hard and soft, frictional, frictionless and adhesive, monodisperse and polydisperse particles in any dimensions is discussed providing insight into an unifying phase diagram for all jammed matter. Furthermore, the connection between the Edwards' ensemble of metastable jammed states and metastability in spin-glasses is established. This highlights that the packing problem can be understood as a constraint satisfaction problem for excluded volume and force and torque balance leading to a unifying framework between the Edwards ensemble of equiprobable jammed states and out-of-equilibrium spin-glasses.