Wyart, Matthieu2016-10-182016-10-182016-10-18201210.1103/PhysRevLett.109.125502https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/130509The requirement that packings of frictionless hard spheres, arguably the simplest structural glass, cannot be compressed by rearranging their network of contacts is shown to yield a new constraint on their microscopic structure. This constraint takes the form a bound between the distribution of contact forces P(f) and the pair distribution function g(r): if P(f)∼fθ and g(r)∼(r-σ 0) -γ, where σ 0 is the particle diameter, one finds that γ≥1/(2+θ). This bound plays a role similar to those found in some glassy materials with long-range interactions, such as the Coulomb gap in Anderson insulators or the distribution of local fields in mean-field spin glasses. There are grounds to believe that this bound is saturated, yielding a mechanism to explain the avalanches of rearrangements with power-law statistics that govern plastic flow in packings. © 2012 American Physical Society.text::journal::journal article::research article