  The fact that a disordered material is not constrained in its properties in
the same way as a crystal presents significant and yet largely untapped
potential for novel material design. However, unlike their crystalline
counterparts, disordered solids are not well understood. One of the primary
obstacles is the lack of a theoretical framework for thinking about disorder
and its relation to mechanical properties. To this end, we study an idealized
system of frictionless athermal soft spheres that, when compressed, undergoes a
jamming phase transition with diverging length scales and clean power-law
signatures. This critical point is the cornerstone of a much larger "jamming
scenario" that has the potential to provide the essential theoretical
foundation necessary for a unified understanding of the mechanics of disordered
solids. We begin by showing that jammed sphere packings have a valid linear
regime despite the presence of "contact nonlinearities." We then investigate
the critical nature of the transition, focusing on diverging length scales and
finite-size effects. Next, we argue that jamming plays the same role for
disordered solids as the perfect crystal plays for crystalline solids. Not only
can it be considered an idealized starting point for understanding disordered
materials, but it can even influence systems that have a relatively high amount
of crystalline order. The behavior of solids can thus be thought of as existing
on a spectrum, with the perfect crystal and the jamming transition at opposing
ends. Finally, we introduce a new principle wherein the contribution of an
individual bond to one global property is independent of its contribution to
another. This principle allows the different global responses of a disordered
system to be manipulated independently and provides a great deal of flexibility
in designing materials with unique, textured and tunable properties.
