Jamming of hard disks

A system of two-dimensional hard disks is one of the simplest models of a classical fluid. Despite the apparent simplicity, the transport properties and the nature of the phase transitions remain areas of active investigation. In a recent article appeared on Physical Review E, Alessandro Taloni from the Center for Complexity and Biosystems at the University of Milan, in collaboration with Dr. Yasmine Meroz from Harvard University (USA) and Prof. Adrian Huerta frm Xalapa University (Mexico), studied the dynamical and statistical properties of such a system in continuous time and collisional representation, i.e. when the real time is replaced by the number of collisions. The study of a remarkable number of physical observables has shown the signature of the jamming transion for high packing fractios, both in continuous and collsional representation.

Alessandro Taloni , Yasmine Meroz, Adrian Huerta
Collisional statistics and dynamics of two-dimensional hard-disk systems: From fluid to solid
Phys. Rev. E 92, 2, 022131 (2015)
Available on: journals.aps.org