Scaling Theory of Giant Frictional Slips in Decompressed Granular Media

When compressed frictional granular media are decompressed, generically a fragile configuration is created at low pressures. Typically this is accompanied by a giant frictional slippage as the fragile state collapses. We show that this instability is understood in terms of a scaling theory with theoretically computable amplitudes and exponents. The amplitude diverges in the thermodynamic limit hinting to the possibility of huge frictional slip events in decompressed granular media. The physics of this slippage is discussed in terms of the probability distribution functions of the tangential and normal forces on the grains which are highly correlated due to the Coulomb condition.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0771

Microscopic Mechanism of Shear Bands in Amorphous Solids

The fundamental instability responsible for the shear localization which results in shear bands in amorphous solids remains unknown despite enormous amount of research, both experimental and theoretical. As this is the main mechanism for the failure of metallic glasses, understanding the instability is invaluable in finding how to stabilize such materials against the tendency to shear localize. In this Letter we explain the mechanism for shear localization under shear, which is the appearance of highly correlated lines of Eshelby-like quadrupolar singularities which organize the non-affine plastic flow of the amorphous solid into a shear band. We prove analytically that such highly correlated solutions in which \C N quadrupoles are aligned with equal orientations are minimum energy states when the strain is high enough. The line lies at 45 degrees to the compressive stress

Plasticity-Induced Magnetization in Amorphous Magnetic Solids

Amorphous magnetic solids, like metallic glasses, exhibit a novel effect: the growth of magnetic order as a function of mechanical strain under athermal conditions in the presence of a magnetic field. The magnetic moment increases in steps whenever there is a plastic event. Thus plasticity induces the magnetic ordering, acting as the effective noise driving the system towards equilibrium. We present results of atomistic simulations of this effect in a model of a magnetic amorphous solid subjected to pure shear and a magnetic field. To elucidate the dependence on external strain and magnetic field we offer a mean-field theory that provides an adequate qualitative understanding of the observed phenomenon

Non-Hamiltonian dynamics in optical microcavities resulting from wave-inspired corrections to geometric optics

We introduce and investigate billiard systems with an adjusted ray dynamics that accounts for modifications of the conventional reflection of rays due to universal wave effects. We show that even small modifications of the specular reflection law have dramatic consequences on the phase space of classical billiards. These include the creation of regions of non-Hamiltonian dynamics, the breakdown of symmetries, and changes in the stability and morphology of periodic orbits. Focusing on optical microcavities, we show that our adjusted dynamics provides the missing ray counterpart to previously observed wave phenomena and we describe how to observe its signatures in experiments. Our findings also apply to acoustic and ultrasound waves and are important in all situations where wavelengths are comparable to system sizes, an increasingly likely situation considering the systematic reduction of the size of electronic and photonic devices.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, final published versio