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Turning intractable counting into sampling: Computing the configurational entropy of three-dimensional jammed packings.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Martiniani, Stefano  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2028-2175
Schrenk, K Julian 
Stevenson, Jacob D 
Wales, David J 

Abstract

We present a numerical calculation of the total number of disordered jammed configurations Ω of N repulsive, three-dimensional spheres in a fixed volume V. To make these calculations tractable, we increase the computational efficiency of the approach of Xu et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 245502 (2011)10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.245502] and Asenjo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 098002 (2014)10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.098002] and we extend the method to allow computation of the configurational entropy as a function of pressure. The approach that we use computes the configurational entropy by sampling the absolute volume of basins of attraction of the stable packings in the potential energy landscape. We find a surprisingly strong correlation between the pressure of a configuration and the volume of its basin of attraction in the potential energy landscape. This relation is well described by a power law. Our methodology to compute the number of minima in the potential energy landscape should be applicable to a wide range of other enumeration problems in statistical physics, string theory, cosmology, and machine learning that aim to find the distribution of the extrema of a scalar cost function that depends on many degrees of freedom.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.stat-mech, cond-mat.stat-mech, cond-mat.dis-nn, cond-mat.soft, physics.comp-ph

Journal Title

Phys Rev E

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2470-0045
2470-0053

Volume Title

93

Publisher

American Physical Society (APS)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/I000844/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/I001352/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N035003/1)
European Commission (275544)
We acknowledge useful discussions with Daniel Asenjo, Carl Goodrich, Silke Henkes, and Fabien Paillusson. S.M. acknowledges financial support by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. K.J.S. acknowledges support by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant No. P2EZP2-152188 and No. P300P2-161078. J.D.S. acknowledges support by Marie Curie Grant 275544. D.F. and D.J.W. acknowledge support by EPSRC Programme Grant EP/I001352/1, by EPSRC grant EP/I000844/1 (D.F.) and ERC Advanced Grant RG59508 (D.J.W.)