Abstract :

The transition from a fluid to a structurally arrested state, upon changing temperature, pressure or applied external stress, is of interest in a wide range of systems, such as glass forming liquids, driven granular matter near jamming and polymer solutions that undergo gelation. Jamming, a process by which mescoscopic particle assemblies fail to fluidize under applied stress, has been extensively studied, using hard and soft sphere packings as model systems, and corresponding experimental realizations. Among the unresolved aspects of jamming, as well as other structural arrest processes, is the change in structure associated with the dynamical arrest transition and its role. Some key themes regarding the geometry of jammed sphere packings will be presented, including new observations and insights from the analysis of void space in a variety of jammed systems shear jammed packings.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Srikanth Sastry is a Professor at the Theoretical Sciences Unit Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He studied in Bangalore, Bombay and Boston, obtaining a Master's degree in Physics from IIT Bombay and a Ph D in Physics from Boston University. After postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health and Princeton University, he has been at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research since 1998, with a two year stint in TIFR Hyderabad during 2012-14. Srikanth Sastry's research interests concern unusual phase behavior and dynamics of liquids and more broadly soft matter, whose work has addressed slow dynamics in glassy systems, different approaches to structural arrest (glass transition, gelation, and jamming), mechanical behavior of and memory effects in glasses, liquid-liquid phase transitions in water and silicon, and related problems.