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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Microparticle Manipulation by Standing Surface Acoustic Waves with Dual-frequency Excitations
Published on: August 21, 2018
Jamming in systems composed of frictionless ellipse-shaped particles
Mitch Mailman1, Carl F Schreck, Corey S O'Hern
1Martin Fisher School of Physics, Brandeis University, Mail Stop 057, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454-9110, USA.
Abstract:
We study numerically frictionless ellipse packings versus the aspect ratio alpha, and find that the jamming transition is fundamentally different from that for spherical particles. The normal mode spectra possess two gaps and three distinct branches over a range of alpha. The energy from deformations along modes in the lowest-energy branch increases quartically, not quadratically. The quartic modes cause novel power-law scaling of the static shear modulus and their number matches the deviation from isostaticity. These results point to a new critical point at alpha>1 that controls jamming of aspherical particles.
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