Characterizing the structure of a compression of hard sphere systems up to jamming*

Via computer simulations, we generate three-dimensional hard-sphere systems as a function of packing fraction by compressing initial liquid-state configurations up to their ending jammed states, which depend on the rate of compression. We study these metastable branches for a broad range of compression rates. Of particular interest is the characterization of the degree of order via order metrics as well as relaxation times along each of these trajectories. Specifically, we compare trajectories obtained by relaxing snapshots along the various metastable branches to thermalized snapshots taken along the equilibrium crystal branch. We expect that this work will help clarify the various kinematic features of the jamming process, and assist in the development of jamming algorithms based on the underlying dynamics of the densification procedure.