Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Many soft and biological materials display so-called 'soft glassy' dynamics; their constituents undergo anomalous random motions and complex cooperative rearrangements. A recent simulation model of one soft glassy material, a coarsening foam, suggested that the random motions of its bubbles are due to the system configuration moving over a fractal energy landscape in high-dimensional space. Here we show that the salient geometrical features of such high-dimensional fractal landscapes can be explored and reliably quantified, using empirical trajectory data from many degrees of freedom, in a model-free manner. For a mayonnaise-like dense emulsion, analysis of the observed trajectories of oil droplets quantitatively reproduces the high-dimensional fractal geometry of the configuration path and its associated local energy minima generated using a computational model. That geometry in turn drives the droplets' complex random motion observed in real space. Our results indicate that experimental studies can elucidate whether the similar dynamics in different soft and biological materials may also be due to fractal landscape dynamics.
Source: Soft Matter
DOI: 10.1039/d3sm00852e
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G144581137, Collaborative Research: Understanding the Fractal Physics of the Cell Cortex, G155958390, Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Energy Landscape Approaches to Understanding Soft Glassy Materials, G4066752229, G6310369944, Collaborative Research: Understanding the Fractal Physics of the Cell Cortex, G7358310432, G7571451339, Probing Glassy and Granular Physics in a Model Soft Glassy Material, G8840450157
OpenAlex ID: W4386265532