PERCOLATION AND CRITICAL EXPONENTS ON RANDOMLY CLOSE-PACKED MIXTURES OF HARD-SPHERES

This paper reports results for the percolation threshold and the critical exponents on a continuum model based on randomly close-packed mixtures of hard spherical particles. In the model, all the particles are identical in all respects save for their label (A or B). Each particle in the system has a variable number of neighbors that are defined by particle contacts, yielding a lattice of sites (the particles) with a distribution of coordination numbers. The percolation threshold for one type of particle was determined for this system, as were the exponents for the screening length, the susceptibility, and the strength of the largest cluster. The amplitude ratio for the susceptibility, below and above the percolation threshold, was also determined, and found to be in reasonable agreement with results for regular 3D lattices.