Universality in the jamming limit for elongated hard particles in one dimension

¹  Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy - Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
²  Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Received: 14 July 2009
Accepted: 7 September 2009

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics properties of a one-dimensional gas of hard elongated particles. The particle centers are restricted to a line, while they can rotate in a two-dimensional space. Correlations between orientations of the objects are studied (by the transfer matrix method) as a function of density and aspect ratio. The behavior in the extreme high-density (jamming) limit is described by a few universality classes depending on the object's shape. In particular, there is a diverging correlation length when the contact point of adjacent objects is far from the line along which their centers move, as for needles and rectangles.