Contact forces distribution for a granular material from a Monte Carlo study on a single grain

The force network ensemble is one of the most promising statistical descriptions of granular media, with an entropy accounting for all force configurations at mechanical equilibrium consistent with some external stress. It is possible to define a temperature-like parameter, the angoricity $\alpha ^{-1} , which under isotropic compression is a scalar variable. This ensemble is frequently studied on whole packings of grains; ho wever, previous...