Related papers: Internally-stressed and positionally-disordered mi…
We develop the characterization of the dynamics at the noise-perturbed edge of chaos in logistic maps in terms of the quantities normally used to describe glassy properties in structural glass formers. Following the recognition [Phys. Lett.…
We study the non-equilibrium relaxation kinetics of interacting magnetic flux lines in disordered type-II superconductors at low temperatures by means of a three-dimensional elastic line model and Monte Carlo simulations. Investigating the…
Classical particle systems characterized by continuous size polydispersity, such as colloidal materials, are not straightforwardly described using statistical mechanics, since fundamental issues may arise from particle distinguishability.…
Glasses are amorphous solids, in the sense that they display elastic behaviour. In crystals, elasticity is associated with phonons, quantized sound-wave excitations. Phonon-like excitations exist also in glasses at very high frequencies…
We observe non-monotonic aging and memory effects, two hallmarks of glassy dynamics, in two disordered mechanical systems: crumpled thin sheets and elastic foams. Under fixed compression, both systems exhibit monotonic non-exponential…
Glasses display a wide array of nonlinear acoustic phenomena at temperatures $T\lesssim 1$ K. This behavior has traditionally been explained by an ensemble of weakly-coupled, two-level tunneling states, a theory that is also used to…
We present computer simulations of concentrated solutions of unknotted nonconcatenated semiflexible ring polymers. Unlike in their flexible counterparts, shrinking involves a strong energetic penalty, favoring interpenetration and…
We study the geometrical frustration scenario of glass formation for simple hard sphere models. We find that the dual picture in terms of defects brings little insight and no theoretical simplification for the understanding of the slowing…
Glasses derive their functional properties from complex relaxation dynamics that remain enigmatic under extreme conditions. While the temperature dependence of these relaxation processes is well-established, their behavior under…
A theory of vibrational excitations based on power-law spatial correlations in the elastic constants (or equivalently in the internal stress) is derived, in order to determine the vibrational density of states $D(\omega)$ of disordered…
Since the discovery of spin glasses in dilute magnetic systems, their study has been largely focused on understanding randomness and defects as the driving mechanism. The same paradigm has also been applied to explain glassy states found in…
We review the anomalous behavior of solid He-4 at low temperatures with particular attention to the role of structural defects present in solid. The discussion centers around the possible role of two level systems and structural glassy…
Understanding the fracture toughness of glasses is of prime importance for science and technology. We study it here using extensive atomistic simulations in which the interaction potential, glass transition cooling rate and loading geometry…
The translational symmetry of solids gives rise to the existence of low-frequency phonons. In ordered systems, some phonons characterized by different wavevectors are degenerate, i.e. they share the same frequency $\omega$; in finite-size…
Although most quantum systems thermalize locally on short time scales independent of initial conditions, recent developments have shown this is not always the case. Lattice geometry and quantum mechanics can conspire to produce constrained…
The topological nature of the disorder of glasses and supercooled liquids strongly affects their high-frequency dynamics. In order to understand its main features, we analytically studied a simple topologically disordered model, where the…
In the first part we present a review of our results concerning the weakly nonlinear regime of the mirror instability in the framework of an asymptotic model. This model belongs to the class of gradient type systems for which the free…
The physics of glasses can be studied from many viewpoints, from material scientists interested in the development of new materials to statistical physicists inventing new theoretical tools to deal with disordered systems. In these lectures…
We show that the same physical mechanism is fundamental for two seemingly different phenomena such as the formation of two-level systems in glasses and the Boson peak in the reduced density of low-frequency vibrational states g(w)/w^2. This…
The interactions between elementary excitations such as phonons, plasmons, magnons, or particle-hole pairs, drive emergent functionalities and electronic instabilities such as multiferroic behaviour, anomalous thermoelectric properties,…