Related papers: Statistics of Thermal Avalanches in Driven Amorpho…
We discuss intermittent time series consisting of discrete bursts or avalanches separated by waiting or silent times. The short time correlations can be understood to follow from the properties of individual avalanches, while longer time…
We present a numerical study on the thermal activated avalanche dynamics in granular materials composed of ferromagnetic clusters embedded in a non-magnetic matrix. A microscopic dynamical simulation based on the reaction-diffusion process…
This Thesis explores how tools from Statistical Physics and Information Theory can help us describe and understand complex systems. In the first part, we study the interplay between internal interactions, environmental changes, and…
Rayleigh-B\'enard convection in the turbulent regime is studied using statistical methods. Exact evolution equations for the probability density function of temperature and velocity are derived from first principles within the framework of…
The random first order transition theory of the dynamics of supercooled liquids is extended to treat aging phenomena in nonequilibrium structural glasses. A reformulation of the idea of ``entropic droplets'' in terms of libraries of local…
We examine the question of whether the formal expressions of equilibrium statistical mechanics can be applied to time independent non-dissipative systems that are not in true thermodynamic equilibrium and are nonergodic. By assuming the…
The statistical mechanics of simple glass forming systems in 2 dimensions is worked out. The glass disorder is encoded via a Voronoi tessellation, and the statistical mechanics is performed directly in this encoding. The theory provides,…
We extend our earlier shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of amorphous plasticity to include the effects of thermally assisted molecular rearrangements. This version of our theory is a substantial revision and generalization of…
We analyze the statistics of water droplet avalanches in a continuously driven system. Distributions are obtained for avalanche size, lifetime, and time between successive avalanches, along with power spectra and return maps. For low flow…
In this thesis I discuss analytical approaches to disordered systems using field theory. Disordered systems are characterized by a random energy landscape due to heterogeneities, which remains fixed on the time scales of the phenomena…
In a preceding paper, Mukhopadhyay and I studied the diffusive motion of a tagged molecule in a heterogeneous glass-forming liquid at temperatures just above a glass transition. Among other features of this system, we postulated a relation…
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…
We present a mesoscale elastoplastic model of creep in disordered materials which considers temperature-dependent stochastic activation of localized deformation events which are mutually coupled by internal stresses, leading to collective…
We study the rheology of amorphous solids in the limit of negligible thermal fluctuations. On the basis of general arguments, the flow curve is shown to result from an interplay between the time scales of the macroscopic driving and the…
The understanding of fluid turbulence has considerably progressed in recent years. The application of the methods of statistical mechanics to the description of the motion of fluid particles, i.e. to the Lagrangian dynamics, has led to a…
The linear response to temperature changes is derived for systems with overdamped stochastic dynamics. Holding both in transient and steady state conditions, the results allow to compute nonequilibrium thermal susceptibilities from…
We study the minimum-energy configuration of a d-dimensional elastic interface in a random potential tied to a harmonic spring. As a function of the spring position, the center of mass of the interface changes in discrete jumps, also called…
We give evidence of a clear structural signature of the glass transition, in terms of a static correlation length with the same dependence on the system size which is typical of critical phenomena. Our approach is to introduce an external,…
We consider nonequilibrium systems with complex dynamics in stationary states with large fluctuations of intensive quantities (e.g. the temperature, chemical potential, or energy dissipation) on long time scales. Depending on the…
Close to the yielding transition, amorphous solids exhibit a jerky dynamics characterized by plastic avalanches. The statistics of these avalanches have been measured experimentally and numerically using a variety of different triggering…