Paper Number
CS4                         My Program 

Session
Colloidal Suspensions and Granular Materials

Title
Memory in amorphous solids: From micro- to macro-rheology

Presentation Date and Time
October 20, 2025 (Monday) 10:50

Track / Room
Track 1 / Sweeney Ballroom A

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

  1. Lindeman, Chloe W. (Johns Hopkins University, Department of Physics and Astronomy)
  2. Nagel, Sidney R. (University of Chicago, James Franck Institute)
  3. Griebler, James J. (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
  4. Kovakas, Penelope G. (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Chemical Engineering)
  5. Rogers, Simon A. (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
  6. Narayanan, Suresh (Argonne National Laboratory, Advanced Photon Source)
  7. Harden, James L. (University of Ottawa, Department of Physics)
  8. Leheny, Robert L. (Johns Hopkins University, Department of Physics and Astronomy)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Chloe W. Lindeman1, Sidney R. Nagel2, James J. Griebler3, Penelope G. Kovakas3, Simon A. Rogers3, Suresh Narayanan4, James L. Harden5 and Robert L. Leheny1
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21211; 2James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; 3Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801; 4Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60565; 5Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada

Speaker / Presenter 
Lindeman, Chloe W.

Keywords
experimental methods; computational methods; colloids; granular materials

Text of Abstract
Disordered materials like jammed solids can exhibit striking memory effects, including the ability to learn deformation types and amplitudes. Amplitude memory in particular highlights the ability of amorphous materials to return nearly or exactly to a previously visited configuration upon application of a particular strain protocol, a surprising feature given the extreme metastability of such systems. This configuration recall suggests a microscopic mechanism for the memory: particle rearrangements that occur as the system is sheared forward are undone as the strain is reversed. Here, we search for pairs of complementary rearrangements in simulations of jammed packings of soft spheres. We show that such pairs are easy to find but that their statistics exhibit unexpected features with implications for how materials form memories in the first place. Finally, we discuss ongoing work in nanocolloidal soft glasses that combines coherent x-ray scattering, which provides structural information, with rheology.