Correlation of plastic events with local structure in jammed packings across spatial dimensions

Abstract

SignificanceMean-field theories, exact in the limit of infinite spatial dimensions, succeed in describing many features of glasses and amorphous solids in low dimensions, leading to considerable effort to understand how behavior evolves with dimension. Until now, all evidence has supported a picture in which “localized physics,” responsible for deviations from mean-field behavior in low dimensions, fades away with rising dimension. Our work shows that rearrangements, in which particles change relative positions leading to fluid-like response, reveal a different picture of dimensional cross-over. We find that rearrangements, which are localized in two- and three-dimensional systems and correlated with local structure, remain just as correlated with local structure up to five dimensions, suggesting that local structure is important even in high dimensions.