Observation and characterization of the vestige of the jamming transition in a thermal three-dimensional system

We study the dependence on the packing fraction of the pair-correlation function g(r) and particle mobility in a dense three-dimensional packing of soft colloids made of poly N-isopropyl acrylamide (pNIPAM), a thermosensitive gel. We find that g(r) for our samples is qualitatively like that of a liquid at all packing fractions. There is a peak in g₁, the height of the first peak of g(r), as a function of the packing fraction. This peak is identified as a vestige, which remains at finite temperature, of the divergence found at the jamming transition in simulations of soft frictionless spheres at zero temperature. As the density is increased, the particle dynamics slow down and near the packing fraction where there is a peak in g₁ the particles become arrested on the time scale of the experiment.