Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material
technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging
over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally
accepted paradigm is that such aging is gradual and its origin is in slower
than exponential microscopic dynamics, akin to the ones in supercooled liquids
or glasses. Nevertheless, time- and space-resolved measurements have provided
contrasting evidence: dynamics faster than exponential, intermittency, and
abrupt structural changes. Here we use 3D computer simulations of a microscopic
model to reveal that the timescales governing stress relaxation respectively
through thermal fluctuations and elastic recovery are key for the aging
dynamics. When thermal fluctuations are too weak, stress heterogeneities
frozen-in upon solidification can still partially relax through elastically
driven fluctuations. Such fluctuations are intermittent, because of strong
correlations that persist over the timescale of experiments or simulations,
leading to faster than exponential dynamics.Comment: 7 pages, Supplementary Information include
