Equilibrium sampling of hard spheres up to the jamming density and beyond

Ludovic Berthier, Daniele Coslovich, Andrea Ninarello, Misaki Ozawa

Published 2015-11-19Version 1

We implement and optimize a particle-swap Monte-Carlo algorithm that allows us to thermalize a polydisperse system of hard spheres up to unprecedently-large volume fractions, where standard algorithms and experiments fail to equilibrate. We show that no glass singularity intervenes before the jamming density, which we independently determine through two distinct non-equilibrium protocols. We demonstrate that equilibrium fluid and non-equilibrium jammed states can have the same density, showing that the jamming transition cannot be the end-point of the fluid branch.