RANDOM MULTIPLICATIVE RESPONSE FUNCTIONS IN GRANULAR CONTACT NETWORKS

The contact network of a frictionless polydisperse granular packing is isostatic in the limit of low applied pressure. It is argued here that, on disordered isostatic networks, displacement–displacement and stress–stress static Green functions are described by random multiplicative processes and have a truncated power-law distribution, with a cut-off that grows exponentially with distance. If the external pressure is increased sufficiently, excess contacts are created, the packing becomes hyperstatic, and the abovementioned anomalous properties disappear because Green functions now have a bounded distribution. Thus, the low-pressure, isostatic, limit is a critical point.