Critical and non-critical jamming of frictional grains

Ellak Somfai, Martin van Hecke, Wouter G. Ellenbroek, Kostya Shundyak, Wim van Saarloos

Published 2005-10-19, updated 2006-10-19Version 3

We probe the nature of the jamming transition of frictional granular media by studying their vibrational properties as a function of the applied pressure p and friction coefficient mu. The density of vibrational states exhibits a crossover from a plateau at frequencies omega \gtrsim omega^*(p,mu) to a linear growth for omega \lesssim omega^*(p,mu). We show that omega^* is proportional to Delta z, the excess number of contacts per grains relative to the minimally allowed, isostatic value. For zero and infinitely large friction, typical packings at the jamming threshold have Delta z -> 0, and then exhibit critical scaling. We study the nature of the soft modes in these two limits, and find that the ratio of elastic moduli is governed by the distance from isostaticity.