Related papers: Probing the non-Debye low frequency excitations in…
We discuss the first theory for the depinning of low dimensional, incommensurate, charge density waves (CDWs) in the strong electron-phonon (e-p) regime. Arguing that most real CDWs systems invariably develop a gigantic dielectric constant…
Vibrational properties of ordered athermal solids near yielding remain poorly understood. We show that yielding in a sheared crystal is governed not by a single localized instability but by directionally extended multimode softening that…
We apply a recently developed theory of the nonphononic vibrational density of states (DOS) in glasses to investigate the impact of local frozen-in stresses on the low-temperature specific heat. Using a completely harmonic description we…
It is now well established that glasses feature quasilocalized nonphononic excitations --- coined "soft spots"---, which follow a universal $\omega^4$ density of states in the limit of low frequencies $\omega$. All glass-specific…
We show that a {\em vibrational instability} of the spectrum of weakly interacting quasi-local harmonic modes creates the maximum in the inelastic scattering intensity in glasses, the Boson peak. The instability, limited by anharmonicity,…
Atomic vibrations play a vital role in the functions of various physical, chemical, and biological systems. The vibrational properties and the specific heat of crystalline bulk materials are well described by Debye theory, which…
We study a disordered vibrational model system, where the spring constants k are chosen from a distribution P(k) ~ 1/k above a cut-off value k_min > 0. We can motivate this distribution by the presence of free volume in glassy materials. We…
To better understand the surprising low-frequency vibrational modes in structural glasses, we study the spectra of a large ensemble of sparse random matrices where disorder is controlled by the distribution of bond weights and network…
We use large scale computer simulations of a glass-forming liquid in which a fraction c of the particles has been permanently pinned. We find that the relaxation dynamics shows an exponential dependence on c. This result can be rationalized…
We study theoretically and numerically the elastic properties of hard sphere glasses, and provide a real-space description of their mechanical stability. In contrast to repulsive particles at zero-temperature, we argue that the presence of…
Low-temperature properties of crystalline solids can be understood using harmonic perturbations around a perfect lattice, as in Debye's theory. Low-temperature properties of amorphous solids, however, strongly depart from such descriptions,…
The low-frequency vibrational and low-temperature thermal properties of amorphous solids are markedly different from those of crystalline solids. This situation is counter-intuitive because any solid material is expected to behave as a…
We use computer simulations to probe the thermodynamic and dynamic properties of a glass-former that undergoes an ideal glass-transition because of the presence of randomly pinned particles. We find that even deep in the equilibrium glass…
At the jamming transition, amorphous packings are known to display anomalous vibrational modes with a density of states (DOS) that remains constant at low frequency. The scaling of the DOS at higher densities remains, however, unclear. One…
We re-examine a long-standing problem of a finite-frequency conductivity of a weakly pinned two-dimensional classical Wigner crystal. In this system an inhomogeneously broadened absorption line (pinning mode) centered at disorder and…
Ultra-stable glasses prepared from the physical vapor deposition of organic molecules present a very low density of two-level states, the kind of glass defects that determine their peculiar low temperature thermal properties. Numerical…
Short range correlated uniform noise in the dispersion coefficient, inherent in many types of optical fibers, broadens and eventually destroys all initially ultra-short pulses. However, under the constraint that the integral of the random…
We use computer simulations to investigate the static properties of a simple glass-forming fluid in which the positions of a finite fraction of the particles has been frozen in. By probing the equilibrium distribution of the overlap between…
To establish a unified framework for studying both discrete and continuous coupling distributions, we introduce the {\it binomial} spin glass, a class of models where the couplings are sums of $m$ identically distributed Bernoulli random…
We propose a simple dynamical model of the glass transition based on the results from a non-randomly frustrated spin model which is known to form a glassy state below a characteristic quench temperature. The model is characterized by a…