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SYSD: Symposium SKM Dissertation-Prize 2013

SYSD 1: SKM Dissertation-Prize 2013

SYSD 1.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 11, 2013, 11:30–11:55, H2

Morphometry and Granular Matter — •Sebastian Kapfer — Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, France — FAU Erlangen, Germany

Morphometry is the theory of the quantitative description of shape. Such a framework is essential for the understanding of the relation between spatial structure and physical properties of complex materials. This talk discusses the application of the so-called Minkowski tensors to soft and granular matter; Minkowski tensors are tensor-valued shape descriptors stemming from integral geometry. With these new tools, it is possible to pinpoint the critical packing fraction for crystallization in hard-sphere packings, which is higher than the current consensus for the value of the ‘random close packing’ (Phys. Rev. E 85 (2012) 030301). I will also discuss the relevance of these results for the statistical mechanics picture of granular matter and further directions of study.