The basins of attraction of soft-sphere packings are not fractal.

Basins of attraction of soft-sphere packings are smooth structures with well-defined length scales, not fractal, as previously claimed.

• Why it matters: Understanding the true geometry of energy landscapes is crucial for accurately modeling many-body systems like glasses and granular materials, but standard methods have been misleading.
• What they did: The study used a high-performance numerical approach with a variable-coefficients ODE solver to analyze the energy landscapes of jammed soft spheres, employing various geometric indicators.
• The result: Findings demonstrate that earlier assertions of fractality in basins of attraction stem from inadequate mapping strategies, revealing these basins as smooth and well-defined.