Marginally stable phases in mean-field structural glasses.

Abstract

A novel form of amorphous matter characterized by marginal stability was recently discovered in the mean-field theory of structural glasses. Using this approach, we provide complete phase diagrams delimiting the location of the marginally stable glass phase for a large variety of pair interactions and physical conditions, extensively exploring physical regimes relevant to granular matter, foams, emulsions, hard and soft colloids, and molecular glasses. We find that all types of glasses may become marginally stable, but the extent of the marginally stable phase highly depends on the preparation protocol. Our results suggest that marginal phases should be observable for colloidal and non-Brownian particles near jamming and for poorly annealed glasses. For well-annealed glasses, two distinct marginal phases are predicted. Our study unifies previous results on marginal stability in mean-field models and will be useful to guide numerical simulations and experiments aimed at detecting marginal stability in finite-dimensional amorphous materials.