jammed structure s for confined hard spheres

A combination of analytical theory and molecular dynamics simulation is used to study the relations hip between thermodynamics and structure in a system of hard spheres confined to a narrow, quasi - one-dimensional channel hard sphere particles are known to form chiral helical jammed packings when they are confined to narrow cylindrical channels w hile most studies have focused on identifying the most dense packing as a function of the channel diameter, we study the role of defects in the packings in order to describe the entire inherent structure landscape of these system s the presence of topological defects that change the local chirality of the helix lowers the packing density and alters the local packing structure we also study how these systems explore their underlying landscape as a function of density