A microscopic mean-field theory of the jamming transition

Abstract: Dense particle packings acquire rigidity through a nonequilibrium jamming transition commonly observed in materials from emulsions to sandpiles. We describe athermal packings and their observed geometric phase transitions using fully equilibrium statistical mechanics and develop a microscopic many-body mean-field theory of the jamming transition for soft repulsive spherical particles. We derive analytically some of the scaling laws and exponents characterizing the transition and obtain predictions for microscopic correlation functions of jammed states that are amenable to experimental verifications, and whose accuracy we confirm using computer simulations.