Determining the interparticle force laws in amorphous solids from a visual image.

Gendelman, Oleg; Pollack, Yoav G; Procaccia, Itamar · Phys Rev E · 2016

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We consider the problem of how to determine the force laws in an amorphous system of interacting particles. Given the positions of the centers of mass of the constituent particles we propose an algorithm to determine the interparticle force laws. Having n different types of constituents we determine the coefficients in the Laurent polynomials for the n(n+1)/2 possibly different force laws. A visual providing the particle positions in addition to a measurement of the pressure is all that is required. The algorithm proposed includes a part that can correct for experimental errors in the positions of the particles. Such a correction of unavoidable measurement errors is expected to benefit many experiments in the field.