From crystal to amorphous: A novel route to unjamming in soft disk packings

Abstract

Numerical studies on the unjamming packing fraction of bi- and polydisperse disk packings, which are generated through compression of a monodisperse crystal, are presented. In bidisperse systems, a fraction f(+) = 0.400 up to 0.800 of the total number of particles has their radii increased by [Formula: see text] R , while the rest has their radii decreased by the same amount. Polydisperse packings are prepared by changing all particle radii according to a uniform distribution in the range [-ΔR, ΔR] . The results indicate that the critical packing fraction is never larger than the value for the initial monodisperse crystal, Φ(o) = π/√12, and that the lowest value achieved is approximately the one for random close packing. These results are seen as a consequence of the interplay between the increase in small-small particle contacts and the local crystalline order provided by the large-large particle contacts.