Related papers: Athermal fluctuations in disordered crystals
In amorphous solids at finite temperatures the particles follow chaotic trajectories which, at temperatures sufficiently lower than the glass transition, are trapped in "cages". Averaging their positions for times shorter than the diffusion…
The effect of increasing structural disorder on the distribution of contact forces P(f), inside three dimensional particle assemblies is systematically studied using computer simulations of model granular packings. Starting from a…
Understanding thermal fluctuations yields insights into a wide range of behaviors in many-body systems. In this work, we analyze the dynamical adaptation of two-dimensional crystalline lattice system under harmonic interaction in response…
Traditionally, it is understood that fluctuations in the equilibrium distribution are not evident in thermodynamic systems of large $N$ (the number of particles in the system) \cite{Huang1}. In this paper we examine the validity of this…
Using a simple model, we study the fluctuating dynamics of inextensible, semiflexible polar filaments interacting with active and directed force generating centres such as molecular motors. Taking into account the fact that the activity…
We present a field-theory description of ultracold bosonic atoms in presence of a disordered external potential. By means of functional integration techniques, we aim to investigate and review the interplay between disordered energy…
Although jammed granular systems are athermal, several thermodynamic-like descriptions have been proposed which make quantitative predictions about the distribution of volume and stress within a system and provide a corresponding…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal confined by two parallel flat substrates whose anchoring conditions vary periodically in one lateral direction. Within the Gaussian approximation, we study the effective forces between the patterned…
In this article we discuss several aspects of the stochastic dynamics of spin models. The paper has two independent parts. Firstly, we explore a few properties of the multi-point correlations and responses of generic systems evolving in…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
While techniques to compute thermal fluctuation induced, or pseudo-Casimir, forces in equilibrium systems are well established, the same is not true for non-equilibrium cases. We present a general formalism that allows us to unambiguously…
We present a universal characterization of stress correlations in athermal systems, across crystalline to amorphous packings. Via numerical analysis of static configurations of particles interacting through harmonic as well as Lennard-Jones…
Many active materials and biological systems are driven far from equilibrium by embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces and distort the surrounding material. Probing and characterizing these athermal fluctuations is essential for…
Diffusion occurs in numerous physical systems throughout nature, drawing its generality from the universality of the central limit theorem. Around a century ago it was realized that an extension to this type of dynamics can be obtained in…
This Ph.D. thesis is divided in two parts. The first one concerns the equilibrium properties of glassy systems. Some aspects of the phenomenology of glasses and of theories attempting to describe them are reviewed in chapter 1. A study of…
Quantum fluctuations in frustrated systems can lead to the emergence of complex many-body phases. However, the role of quantum fluctuations in frustration-free lattices is less explored and could provide an interesting avenue for exploring…
We describe a many-body theory for interlayer dispersion forces between weakly disordered atomically thin crystals and numerically investigate the role of disorder for different layer-separation distances and for different densities of…
Thermal displacement fluctuations in a crystal may be classified as either "affine" or "non-affine". While the former couples to external stress with familiar consequences, the response of a crystal when {\em non-affine} displacements are…
The thermal stability of rotating, stratified, unmagnetized atmospheres is studied by means of linear-perturbation analysis, finding stability, overstability or instability, depending on the properties of the gas distribution, but also on…
Jamming is ubiquitous in disordered systems, but the critical behavior of jammed solids subjected to active forces or thermal fluctuations remains elusive. In particular, while passive athermal jamming remains mean-field-like in two and…