Despite decades of work, gaining a first-principles understanding of amorphous materials
remains an extremely challenging problem. However, recent theoretical breakthroughs have …

Jamming is a ubiquitous phenomenon that appears in many soft matter systems, including
granular materials, foams, colloidal suspensions, emulsions, polymers, and cells—when …

Deep learning has been immensely successful at a variety of tasks, ranging from
classification to artificial intelligence. Learning corresponds to fitting training data, which is …

In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials
using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium …

We report an analytical study of the vibrational spectrum of the simplest model of jamming,
the soft perceptron. We identify two distinct classes of soft modes. The first kind of modes are …

Random constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) have been studied extensively using
statistical physics techniques. They provide a benchmark to study average case scenarios …

The simplicity of hard spheres as a model system is deceptive. Although the particles
interact solely through volume exclusion, that nevertheless suffices for a wealth of static and …

We study a well known neural network model—the perceptron—as a simple statistical
physics model of jamming of hard objects. We exhibit two regimes:(1) a convex optimization …

Note: This Perspective offers a progress report for the Simons collaboration “Cracking the
Glass Problem,” of which the authors are some of the principal investigators. While the …

Rheological properties of dense flows of hard particles are singular as one approaches the
jamming threshold where flow ceases both for aerial granular flows dominated by inertia …