A simple effective rule to estimate the jamming packing fraction of polydisperse hard spheres

Abstract

A recent proposal in which the equation of state of a polydisperse hard-sphere mixture is mapped onto that of the one-component fluid is extrapolated beyond the freezing point to estimate the jamming packing fraction $ϕ_\text{J}$ of the polydisperse system as a simple function of $M_1M_3/M_2^2$, where $M_k$ is the $k$th moment of the size distribution. An analysis of experimental and simulation data of $ϕ_\text{J}$ for a large number of different mixtures shows a remarkable general agreement with the theoretical estimate. To give extra support to the procedure, simulation data for seventeen mixtures in the high-density region are used to infer the equation of state of the pure hard-sphere system in the metastable region. An excellent collapse of the inferred curves up to the glass transition and a significant narrowing of the different out-of-equilibrium glass branches all the way to jamming are observed. Thus, the present approach provides an extremely simple criterion to unify in a common framework and to give coherence to data coming from very different polydisperse hard-sphere mixtures.

5 pages, 3 figures; v2: slight changes plus new references