Edwards' measures: A thermodynamic construction for dense granular media and glasses - art. no. 051301

We present numerical support for the hypothesis that macroscopic observable s of dense granular media and glasses can be evaluated from averages over t ypical blocked configurations: we construct the corresponding measure for a class of finite-dimensional systems and compare its predictions for variou s observables with the outcome of the out of equilibrium dynamics at large times. We discuss in detail the connection with the effective temperatures that appear in out of equilibrium glass theories, as well as the relation b etween our computation and those based on "inherent structure" arguments. A short version of this work has appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5034 (2000 ).