Equilibrium Sampling of Hard Spheres up to the Jamming Density and Beyond

We implement and optimize a particle-swap Monte Carlo algorithm that allows us to thermalize a polydisperse system of hard spheres up to unprecedentedly large volume fractions, where previous algorithms and experiments fail to equilibrate. We show that no glass singularity intervenes before the jamming density, which we independently determine through two distinct nonequilibrium protocols. We demonstrate that equilibrium fluid and nonequilibrium jammed states can have the same density, showing that the jamming transition cannot be the end point of the fluid branch.