Fluctuations and like-torque clusters at the onset of the discontinuous shear thickening transition in granular materials

The main mechanism driving rheological transitions is usually mechanical perturbation by shear unjamming mechanism. Investigating discontinuous shear thickening is challenging because the shear counterintuitively acts as a jamming mechanism. Moreover, at the brink of this transition, a thickening material exhibits fluctuations that extend both spatially and temporally. Despite recent extensive research, the origins of such spatiotemporal fluctuations remain unidentified. Here, we numerically investigate the fluctuations in injected power in discontinuous shear thickening in granular materials. We show that a simple fluctuation relation governs the statistics of power fluctuations. Furthermore, we reveal the formation of like-torque clusters near thickening and identify an unexpected relation between the spatiotemporal fluctuations and the collective behavior due to the formation of like-torque clusters. We expect that our general approach should pave the way to unmasking the origin of spatiotemporal fluctuations in discontinuous shear thickening. An open question in the field of granular materials and non-equilibrium physics is the origin and interpretation of frictional effects and spatiotemporal fluctuation in the discontinuous shear thickening transition. Here, the authors study numerically the spatiotemporal fluctuations of local injected power across the discontinuous shear thickening transition, finding that rare fluctuations caused by frictional forces are governed by a simple fluctuation relation and the emergence of collective behavior in the particle’s torque.