Related papers: Predicting plasticity in disordered solids from st…
Recent studies point out far-reaching connections between the topological characteristics of structural glasses and their material properties, paralleling results in quantum physics that highlight the relevance of the nature of the…
We use a random pinning procedure to investigate stable glassy states associated with large deviations of the activity in a model glass-former. We pin particles both from active (equilibrium) configurations and from stable (inactive) glassy…
We investigate the microscopic mechanisms giving rise to plastic depinning and irreversible flow in vortex matter. The topology of the vortex array crucially determines the flow response of this system. To illustrate this claim, two…
Organisms in nature can alter the short-range order of an amorphous precursor phase, thereby controlling the resulting crystalline structure. This phenomenon inspired an investigation of the effect of modifying the short-range order within…
Plastic deformation of heterogeneous solid structures is often characterized by random intermittent local plastic events. On the mesoscale this feature can be represented by a spatially fluctuating local yield threshold. Here we study the…
Motivated by results of the topological theory of glasses accounting for geometric frustration, we develop the simplest possible continuum mechanical model of defect dynamics in metallic glasses that accounts for topological, energetic, and…
The universal anomalous vibrational and thermal properties of amorphous solids are believed to be related to the local variations of the elasticity. Recently it has been shown that the vibrational properties are sensitive to the glass's…
Recent progress in approaches to determine the elastic constants of solids starting from the microscopic particle interactions is reviewed. On the theoretical side, density functional theory approaches are discussed and compared to more…
Unstable systems of fluidized grains in a very-narrow vertical tube can auto-defluidize after some time, the settling particles forming either a glass- or crystal-like structure. We carried out experiments using different polymer spheres,…
A novel approach to predict the atomic densities of amorphous materials is explored on the basis of Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) in density functional theory. Despite that determination of the atomic density of matter is crucial…
Soft porous materials, such as biological tissues and soils, are exposed to periodic deformations in a variety of natural and industrial contexts. The detailed flow and mechanics of these deformations have not yet been systematically…
We study the local disorder in the deformation of amorphous materials by decomposing the particle displacements into a continuous, inhomogeneous field and the corresponding fluctuations. We compare these fields to the commonly used…
Disordered solids exhibit unusual properties of their vibrational states and thermal conductivities. Recent progresses have well established the concept of "elastic heterogeneity", i.e., disordered materials show spatially inhomogeneous…
Glasses and gels, widely encountered amorphous solids with diverse industrial and everyday applications, share intriguing similarities such as rigidity without crystalline order and dynamic slowing down during aging. However, the underlying…
Glass is a microscopically disordered, solid form of matter that results when a fluid is cooled or compressed in such a fashion that it does not crystallise. Almost all types of materials are capable of glass formation -- polymers, metal…
Amorphous solids appear to react elastically to small external strains, but in contrast to ideal elastic media, plastic responses abound immediately, at any value of the strain. Such plastic responses are quasi-localized in nature, with the…
Using positional data from video-microscopy of a two-dimensional colloidal system and from simulations of hard discs we determine the wave-vector-dependent normal mode spring constants in the supercooled fluid and glassy state,…
The mechanical response of amorphous solids to external strains is riddled with plastic events that create topological charges in the resulting displacement field. It was recently shown that the latter leads to screening phenomena that are…
Existence and growth of amorphous order in supercooled liquids approaching glass transition is a subject of intense research. Even after decades of work, there is still no clear consensus on the molecular mechanisms that lead to a rapid…
We discuss how structural disorder and amorphization affects solid-state diffusion, and consider zirconolite as a currently important case study. By performing extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we disentangle the effects of…