Abstract
We simulate a densely jammed, athermal assembly of repulsive soft particles immersed in a solvent. Starting from an initial condition corresponding to a quench from a high temperature, we find non-trivial slow dynamics driven by a gradual release of stored elastic energy, with the root mean squared particle speed decaying as a power law in time with a fractional exponent. This decay is accompanied by the presence within the assembly of spatially localised and temporally intermittent `hot-spots' of non-affine deformation, connected by long-ranged swirls in the velocity field, reminiscent of the local plastic events and long-ranged elastic propagation that have been intensively studied in sheared amorphous materials. The pattern of hot-spots progressively coarsens, with the hot-spot size and separation slowly growing over time, and the associated velocity correlation length increasing as a sublinear power law. Each individual spot however exists only transiently, within an overall picture of strongly intermittent dynamics.
| Original language | English |
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| Journal | Physical Review Letters |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 7 Aug 2019 |