English

Goldstone fluctuations in the amorphous solid state

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-10 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

Goldstone modes in the amorphous solid state, resulting from the spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry due to random localisation of particles, are discussed. Starting from a microscopic model with quenched disorder, the broken symmetry is identified to be that of relative translations of the replicas. Goldstone excitations, corresponding to pure shear deformations, are constructed from long wavelength distortions of the order parameter. The elastic free energy is computed, and it is shown that Goldstone fluctuations destroy localisation in two spatial dimensions, yielding a two-dimensional amorphous solid state characterised by power-law correlations.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0310664,
  title  = {Goldstone fluctuations in the amorphous solid state},
  author = {Swagatam Mukhopadhyay and Paul M. Goldbart and Annette Zippelius},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0310664},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures