Can exotic disordered "stealthy" particle configurations tolerate arbitrarily large holes?

• Published in: Soft matter Vol. 13; no. 36; pp. 6197 - 627
• Main Authors: Zhang, G, Stillinger, F. H, Torquato, S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 20.09.2017
• ISSN: 1744-683X; 1744-6848
• DOI: 10.1039/c7sm01028a

The probability of finding a spherical cavity or "hole" of arbitrarily large size in typical disordered many-particle systems in the infinite-system-size limit ( e.g. , equilibrium liquid states) is non-zero. Such "hole" statistics are intimately linked to the thermodynamic and nonequilibrium physical properties of the system. Disordered "stealthy" many-particle configurations in d -dimensional Euclidean space &z.dstrR; d are exotic amorphous states of matter that lie between a liquid and crystal that prohibit single-scattering events for a range of wave vectors and possess no Bragg peaks [Torquato et al. , Phys. Rev. X , 2015, 5 , 021020]. In this paper, we provide strong numerical evidence that disordered stealthy configurations across the first three space dimensions cannot tolerate arbitrarily large holes in the infinite-system-size limit, i.e. , the hole probability has compact support. This structural "rigidity" property apparently endows disordered stealthy systems with novel thermodynamic and physical properties, including desirable band-gap, optical and transport characteristics. We also determine the maximum hole size that any stealthy system can possess across the first three space dimensions. We show that exotic disordered "stealthy" many-particle configurations across space dimensions cannot tolerate arbitrarily large holes.