# Slow coarsening in jammed athermal soft particle suspensions

## TL;DR

This study uses simulations to reveal slow, intermittent dynamics and coarsening behavior in jammed athermal soft particle suspensions, highlighting localized deformation and elastic interactions over time.

## Contribution

It uncovers the slow coarsening and intermittent hot-spot dynamics in jammed soft particles, linking local plastic events to elastic propagation in athermal systems.

## Key findings

- Root mean squared particle speed decays as a power law in time.
- Presence of localized hot-spots of non-affine deformation.
- Hot-spot size and separation grow over time, indicating coarsening.

## Abstract

We simulate a densely jammed, athermal assembly of repulsive soft particles immersed in a solvent. Starting from an initial condition corresponding to a quench from a high temperature, we find non-trivial slow dynamics driven by a gradual release of stored elastic energy, with the root mean squared particle speed decaying as a power law in time with a fractional exponent. This decay is accompanied by the presence within the assembly of spatially localised and temporally intermittent `hot-spots' of non-affine deformation, connected by long-ranged swirls in the velocity field, reminiscent of the local plastic events and long-ranged elastic propagation that have been intensively studied in sheared amorphous materials. The pattern of hot-spots progressively coarsens, with the hot-spot size and separation slowly growing over time, and the associated velocity correlation length increasing as a sublinear power law. Each individual spot however exists only transiently, within an overall picture of strongly intermittent dynamics.