Probing Gardner Physics in an Active Quasithermal Pressure-Controlled Granular System of Noncircular Particles.

Abstract

To search for experimental signals of the Gardner crossover, an active quasithermal granular glass is constructed using a monolayer of air-fluidized star-shaped particles. The pressure of the system is controlled by adjusting the tension exerted on an enclosing boundary. Velocity distributions of the internal particles and the scaling of the pressure, density, effective temperature, and relaxation time are examined, demonstrating that the system has key features of a thermal system. Using a pressure-based quenching protocol that brings the system into deeper glassy states, signals of the Gardner crossover are detected via cage size and separation order parameters for both particle positions and orientations, offering experimental evidence of Gardner physics for a system of anisotropic quasithermal particles in a low spatial dimension.