Following the evolution of glassy states under external perturbations: compression and shear-strain

Corrado Rainone (1, 2) , Pierfrancesco Urbani (3) , Hajime Yoshino (4) , Francesco Zamponi (2)

1 Dipartimento di Fisica, Università “La Sapienza"
2 LPTENS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'ENS [École Normale Supérieure]
3 IPHT - Institut de Physique Théorique - UMR CNRS 3681
4 Graduate School of Science [Osaka City]

We consider the adiabatic evolution of glassy states under external perturbations. Although the formalism we use is very general, we focus here on infinite-dimensional hard spheres where an exact analysis is possible. We consider perturbations of the boundary, i.e. compression or (volume preserving) shear-strain, and we compute the response of glassy states to such perturbations: pressure and shear-stress. We find that both quantities overshoot before the glass state becomes unstable at a spinodal point where it melts into a liquid (or yields). We also estimate the yield stress of the glass. Finally, we study the stability of the glass basins towards breaking into sub-basins, corresponding to a Gardner transition. We find that close to the dynamical transition, glasses undergo a Gardner transition after an infinitesimal perturbation.

Domains: Soft Condensed Matter [cond-mat.soft]

Corrado Rainone, Pierfrancesco Urbani, Hajime Yoshino, Francesco Zamponi. Following the evolution of glassy states under external perturbations: compression and shear-strain. Physical Review Letters, 2014, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.015701⟩. ⟨cea-01463143⟩