Using hybrid molecular dynamics/SWAP Monte Carlo (MD/SMC) simulations, we show that while the terminal relaxation times $\tau \left(\varphi \right)$ for FIRE energy minimization of soft-sphere glasses can decrease by orders of magnitude as sample equilibration proceeds and the jamming density ${\varphi }_{\mathrm{J}}$ increases, they always scale as $\tau \left(\varphi \right)\sim {({\varphi }_{\mathrm{J}}-\varphi )}^{-2}\sim {[Z_{\mathrm{iso}}-Z_{\mathrm{ms}}\left(\tau \right)]}^{-2}$, where $Z_{\mathrm{iso}}=2d$ and $Z_{\mathrm{ms}}\left(\tau \right)$ is the average coordination number of particles satisfying a minimal local mechanical stability criterion ($Z\ge d+1$) at the top of the final potential-energy-landscape (PEL) sub-basin the system encounters. This scaling allows us to collapse $\tau$ datasets that look very different when plotted as a function of $\varphi$, and to address a closely related question: how does the character of the PEL basins that dense thermal glasses most typically occupy evolve as the glasses age at constant $\varphi$ and $T$?

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• Jamming
• Polymer aging
• Molecular dynamics
• Scaling methods