No Arabic abstract
This work studies the jamming and percolation of parallel squares in a single-cluster growth model. The Leath-Alexandrowicz method was used to grow a cluster from an active seed site. The sites of a square lattice were occupied by addition of the equal size $k times k$ squares (E-problem) or a mixture of $k times k$ and $m times m$ ($m leqslant k$) squares (M-problem). The larger $k times k$ squares were assumed to be active (conductive) and the smaller $m times m$ squares were assumed to be blocked (non-conductive). For equal size $k times k$ squares (E-problem) the value of $p_j = 0.638 pm 0.001$ was obtained for the jamming concentration in the limit of $krightarrowinfty$. This value was noticeably larger than that previously reported for a random sequential adsorption model, $p_j = 0.564 pm 0.002$. It was observed that the value of percolation threshold $p_{mathrm{c}}$ (i.e., the ratio of the area of active $k times k$ squares and the total area of $k times k$ squares in the percolation point) increased with an increase of $k$. For mixture of $k times k$ and $m times m$ squares (M-problem), the value of $p_{mathrm{c}}$ noticeably increased with an increase of $k$ at a fixed value of $m$ and approached 1 at $kgeqslant 10m$. This reflects that percolation of larger active squares in M-problem can be effectively suppressed in the presence of smaller blocked squares.
We investigate kinetically constrained models of glassy transitions, and determine which model characteristics are crucial in allowing a rigorous proof that such models have discontinuous transitions with faster than power law diverging length and time scales. The models we investigate have constraints similar to that of the knights model, introduced by Toninelli, Biroli, and Fisher (TBF), but differing neighbor relations. We find that such knights-like models, otherwise known as models of jamming percolation, need a ``No Parallel Crossing rule for the TBF proof of a glassy transition to be valid. Furthermore, most knight-like models fail a ``No Perpendicular Crossing requirement, and thus need modification to be made rigorous. We also show how the ``No Parallel Crossing requirement can be used to evaluate the provable glassiness of other correlated percolation models, by looking at models with more stable directions than the knights model. Finally, we show that the TBF proof does not generalize in any straightforward fashion for three-dimensiona
We perform Monte Carlo simulations to determine the average excluded area $<A_{ex}>$ of randomly oriented squares, randomly oriented widthless sticks and aligned squares in two dimensions. We find significant differences between our results for randomly oriented squares and previous analytical results for the same. The sources of these differences are explained. Using our results for $<A_{ex}>$ and Monte Carlo simulation results for the percolation threshold, we estimate the mean number of connections per object $B_c$ at the percolation threshold for squares in 2-D. We study systems of squares that are allowed random orientations within a specified angular interval. Our simulations show that the variation in $B_c$ is within 1.6% when the angular interval is varied from 0 to $pi/2$.
We study the glass and jamming transition of finite-dimensional models of simple liquids: hard- spheres, harmonic spheres and more generally bounded pair potentials that modelize frictionless spheres in interaction. At finite temperature, we study their glassy dynamics via field-theoretic methods by resorting to a mapping towards an effective quantum mechanical evolution, and show that such an approach resolves several technical problems encountered with previous attempts. We then study the static, mean-field version of their glass transition via replica theory, and set up an expansion in terms of the corresponding static order parameter. Thanks to this expansion, we are able to make a direct and exact comparison between historical Mode-Coupling results and replica theory. Finally we study these models at zero temperature within the hypotheses of the random-first-order-transition theory, and are able to derive a quantitative mean-field theory of the jamming transition. The theoretic methods of field theory and liquid theory used in this work are presented in a mostly self-contained, and hopefully pedagogical, way. This manuscript is a corrected version of my PhD thesis, defended in June, 29th, under the advisorship of Frederic van Wijland, and also contains the result of collaborations with Ludovic Berthier and Francesco Zamponi. The PhD work was funded by a CFM-JP Aguilar grant, and conducted in the Laboratory MSC at Universite Denis Diderot--Paris 7, France.
We present a novel mechanism for the anomalous behaviour of the specific heat in low-temperature amorphous solids. The analytic solution of a mean-field model belonging to the same universality class as high-dimensional glasses, the spherical perceptron, suggests that there exists a crossover temperature above which the specific heat scales linearly with temperature while below it a cubic scaling is displayed. This relies on two crucial features of the phase diagram: (i) The marginal stability of the free-energy landscape, which induces a gapless phase responsible for the emergence of a power-law scaling (ii) The vicinity of the classical jamming critical point, as the crossover temperature gets lowered when approaching it. This scenario arises from a direct study of the thermodynamics of the system in the quantum regime, where we show that, contrary to crystals, the Debye approximation does not hold.
Neutron scattering experiments at the magnetic vacancy percolation threshold concentration, x_v, using the random-field Ising crystal Fe(0.76)Zn(0.24)F2, show stability of the transition to long-range order up to fields H=6.5 T. The observation of the stable long-range order corroborates the sharp boundary observed in computer simulations at x_v separating equilibrium critical scattering behavior at high magnetic concentration from low concentration hysteretic behavior. Low temperature H>0 scattering line shapes exhibit the dependence on the scattering wavevector expected for percolation threshold fractal structures.