Related papers: Mapping out the glassy landscape of a mesoscopic e…
We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the…
Fatigue failure occurs when a solid is subjected to repeated, cyclic loading. Glasses subjected to cyclic to shear deformation have recently been investigated using computer simulations and theoretical models, to characterize and…
This thesis sums up the research work I performed as a PhD student in Sapienza Universit\`a di Roma, and \'Ecole Normale Sup\'erieure, Paris, under the joint supervision of Prof. Giorgio Parisi and Dr. Francesco Zamponi. The thesis focuses…
Aging in an attraction-driven colloidal glass is studied by computer simulations. The system is equilibrated without attraction and instantaneously ``quenched'', at constant colloid volume fraction, to one of two states beyond the glass…
We show that applying simple dynamical rules to Baxter's eight-vertex model leads to a system which resembles a glass-forming liquid. There are analogies with liquid, supercooled liquid, glassy and crystalline states. The disordered phases…
We propose a way to analyze the landscape geometry explored by a glassy system after a quench solely based on time series of energy values recorded during a simulation. Entry and exit times for landscape `valleys' are defined operationally…
The dynamical glass transition is typically taken to be the temperature at which a glassy liquid is no longer able to equilibrate on experimental timescales. Consequently, the physical properties of these systems just above or below the…
We propose a new class of phenomenological models for dynamic glass transitions. The system consists of an ensemble of mesoscopic regions to which local energies are allocated. At each time step, a region is randomly chosen and a new local…
Continuum models of plasticity fail to capture the richness of microstructural evolution because the continuum is a homogeneous construction. The present study shows that an alternative way is available at the mesoscale in the form of truly…
Recent experiments and simulations have revealed glassy features in the cytoplasm, living tissues as well as dense assemblies of self propelled colloids. This leads to a fundamental question: how do these non-equilibrium (active) amorphous…
The glass transition can simply be viewed as the point at which the viscosity of a structurally disordered liquid reaches 10^{13} Poise [1]. This definition is operational but it sidesteps fundamental controversies about the glass: Is the…
While experiments and simulations have provided a rich picture of the dynamic heterogeneity in glasses at constant temperature or under steady shear, the dynamics of glasses under oscillatory shear remain comparatively less explored. Recent…
We measure the local yield stress, at the scale of small atomic regions, in a deeply quenched two-dimensional glass model undergoing shear banding in response to athermal quasistatic (AQS) deformation. We find that the occurrence of…
A major challenge in simulating glassy systems is the ability to generate configurations that may be found in equilibrium at sufficiently low temperatures, in order to probe static and dynamic behaviour close to the glass transition. A…
We are interested in the out of equilibrium phenomena observed in the electrical conductance of disordered insulators at low temperature, which may be signatures of the electron coulomb glass state. The present work is devoted to the…
Past models of stress-strain response under cyclic loading mainly rely on macroscopic equations which consider microstructure evolution indirectly or simply discard microstructure information. Modern materials science, on the other hand,…
We demonstrate that plastic deformation in solids is associated with a dynamic transition that is reminiscent to the transition from a superconducting to a mixed phase in Type II superconductors. We report analytic calculations, extensive…
The plastic deformation of amorphous solids is mediated by localized shear transformations involving small groups of particles rearranging irreversibly in an elastic background. We introduce and compare three different computational methods…
We study the effect of periodic, spatially uniform temperature variation on mechanical properties and structural relaxation of amorphous alloys using molecular dynamics simulations. The disordered material is modeled via a non-additive…
We consider the yielding behavior of amorphous solids under cyclic shear deformation and show that it can be mapped into a random walk in a confining potential with an absorbing boundary. The resulting dynamics is governed by the first…