Ghosh, Shankar

Coupled Dynamical Phase Transitions in Driven Disk Packings

Under the influence of oscillatory shear, a monolayer of frictional granular disks exhibits two dynamical phase transitions: a transition from an initially disordered state to an ordered crystalline state and a dynamic active-absorbing phase transition. Although there is no reason a priori for these to be at the same critical point, they are. Also, the transitions may also be characterized by the disk trajectories, which are nontrivial loops breaking time-reversal invariance.