Comment on "Effects of Point Defects on the Phase Diagram of Vortex States in High-Tc Superconductors in the B || c Axis"

We comment on a recent work by Nonomura and Hu who simulated the 3D XY model for a type-II superconductor in an applied magnetic field, in the presence of uncorrelated point randomness. We clarify the nature of the "vortex slush" state that they found, and argue that this state is unstable in the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figure

Glassiness, Rigidity and Jamming of Frictionless Soft Core Disks

The jamming of bi-disperse soft core disks is considered, using a variety of different protocols to produce the jammed state. In agreement with other works, we find that cooling and compression can lead to a broad range of jamming packing fractions $\phi_J$, depending on cooling rate and initial configuration; the larger the degree of big particle clustering in the initial configuration, the larger will be the value of $\phi_J$. In contrast, we find that shearing disrupts particle clustering, leading to a much narrower range of $\phi_J$ as the shear strain rate varies. In the limit of vanishingly small shear strain rate, we find a unique non-trivial value for the jamming density that is independent of the initial system configuration. We conclude that shear driven jamming is a unique and well defined critical point in the space of shear driven steady states. We clarify the relation between glassy behavior, rigidity and jamming in such systems and relate our results to recent experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, significantly expanded version as accepted for publication in PR

Dissipation and Rheology of Sheared Soft-Core Frictionless Disks

We use numerical simulations to investigate the effect of different dissipative models on the shearing rheology of massive soft-core frictionless disks in two dimensions. We show that the presence of Newtonian (overdamped) vs Bagnoldian (inertial) rheology is related to the formation of large connected clusters of disks, and that sharp transitions may exist between the two as system parameters vary. In the limit of strongly inelastic collisions, we find that rheological curves collapse to a well-defined limit when plotted against an appropriate dimensionless strain rate.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, revised to published versio

Critical Scaling of Bagnold Rheology at the Jamming Transition of Frictionless Two Dimensional Disks

We carry out constant volume simulations of steady-state, shear driven, rheology in a simple model of bidisperse, soft-core, frictionless disks in two dimensions, using a dissipation law that gives rise to Bagnoldian rheology. We carry out a detailed critical scaling analysis of our resulting data for pressure $p$ and shear stress $\sigma$, in order to determine the critical exponent $\beta$ that describes the algebraic divergence of the Bagnold transport coefficients, as the jamming transition is approached from below. We show that it is necessary, for the strain rates considered in this work, to consider the leading correction-to-scaling term in order to achieve a self-consistent analysis of our data. Our resulting value $\beta\approx 5.0\pm 0.4$ is clearly larger than the theoretical prediction by Otsuki and Hayakawa, and is consistent with earlier numerical results by Peyneau and Roux, and recent theoretical predictions by DeGiuli et al. We have also considered the macroscopic friction $\mu\equiv \sigma/p$ and similarly find results consistent with Peyneau and Roux, and with DeGiuli et al. Our results confirm that the shear driven jamming transition in Bagnoldian systems is well described by a critical scaling theory (as was found previously for Newtonian systems), and we relate this scaling theory to the phenomenological constituent laws for dilatancy and friction.Comment: 20 pages, 21 figures; revised manuscript according to published versio