We investigate the high-frequency behavior of the density of vibrational states in three-dimensional elasticity theory with spatially fluctuating elastic moduli. At frequencies well above the mobility edge, instanton solutions yield an exponentially decaying density of states. The instanton solutions describe excitations, which become localized due to the disorder-induced fluctuations, which lower the sound velocity in a finite region compared to its average value. The exponentially decaying density of states (known in electronic systems as the Lifshitz tail) is governed by the statistics of a fluctuating-elasticity landscape, capable of trapping the vibrational excitations.
Disordered solids exhibit unusual properties of their vibrational states and thermal conductivities. Recent progresses have well established the concept of "elastic heterogeneity", i.e., disordered materials show spatially inhomogeneous elastic moduli. In this study, by using molecular-dynamics simulations, we gradually introduce "disorder" into a numerical system to control its modulus heterogeneity. The system starts from a perfect crystalline state, progressively transforms into an increasingly disordered crystalline state, and finally undergoes structural amorphisation. We monitor independ…
In crystals, molecules thermally vibrate around the periodic lattice sites. Vibrational motions are well understood in terms of phonons, which carry heat and control heat transport. The situation is notably different in disordered solids, where vibrational excitations are not phonons and can be even localized. Recent numerical work has established the concept of elastic heterogeneity: disordered solids show inhomogeneous local mechanical response. Clearly, the heterogeneous nature of elastic properties strongly influences vibrational and thermal properties, and it is expected to be the origin …
We show that viscoelastic effects play a crucial role in the damping of vibrational modes in harmonic amorphous solids. The relaxation of a given plane wave is described by a memory function of a semi-infinite one-dimensions mass-spring chain. The initial vibrational energy spreads from the first site of the chain to infinity. In the beginning of the chain, there is a barrier, which significantly reduces the decay of vibrational energy below the Ioffe-Regel frequency. To obtain the parameters of the chain, we present a numerically stable method, based on the Chebyshev expansion of the local vi…
The boson peak (BP) is an excess of vibrational states over the Debye law appearing at terahertz frequencies. It is found in all glasses and marks the crossover between the long-wavelength behavior, where the solid can be considered as an isotropic continuum, and the region where the wavelength of the sound wave starts to experience the microscopic details of the structure. This chapter is devoted to a review of the main experimental observations regarding the vibrational dynamics of amorphous solids, as detected by neutron and X-ray scattering techniques. A first part of the chapter is devote…
We study a recently introduced and exactly solvable mean-field model for the density of vibrational states $\mathcal{D}(ω)$ of a structurally disordered system. The model is formulated as a collection of disordered anharmonic oscillators, with random stiffness $κ$ drawn from a distribution $p(κ)$, subjected to a constant field $h$ and interacting bilinearly with a coupling of strength $J$. We investigate the vibrational properties of its ground state at zero temperature. When $p(κ)$ is gapped, the emergent $\mathcal{D}(ω)$ is also gapped, for small $J$. Upon increasing $J$, the gap vanishes on…
The low-frequency vibrations of glasses are markedly different from those of crystals. These vibrations have recently been categorized into two types: spatially extended vibrations, whose vibrational density of states (vDOS) follows a non-Debye quadratic law, and quasilocalized vibrations (QLVs), whose vDOS follows a quartic law. The former are explained by elasticity theory with quenched disorder and microscopic replica theory as being a consequence of elastic instability, but the origin of the latter is still debated. Here, we show that the latter can also be directly derived from elasticity…
Understanding the vibrational and thermal properties of amorphous solids is one of the most discussed and long-standing issues in condensed matter physics. Recent works have made significant steps towards understanding harmonic vibrational states. In particular, it has been established that quasi-localized vibrational modes emerge in addition to phonon-like vibrational modes. In this work, we study the anharmonic properties of these vibrational modes. We find that vibrational modes exhibit anharmonicities that induce particle rearrangements and cause transitions to different states. These anha…
The low-frequency vibrational and low-temperature thermal properties of amorphous solids are markedly different from those of crystalline solids. This situation is counter-intuitive because any solid material is expected to behave as a homogeneous elastic body in the continuum limit, in which vibrational modes are phonons following the Debye law. A number of phenomenological explanations have been proposed, which assume elastic heterogeneities, soft localized vibrations, and so on. Recently, the microscopic mean-field theories have been developed to predict the universal non-Debye scaling law.…
While soft quasilocalized vibrational modes are known to populate the low-frequency spectrum of glassy solids, their contribution to thermal properties is still not fully elucidated. We numerically show that, despite their spatially localized nature, these modes are as effective heat carriers as the delocalized ones and can contribute non-negligible to the total thermal conductivity in the low-temperature regime, especially for T < 0.05 Tg where Tg is the glass transition temperature. We further prove that the mutual coherence between the low-frequency quasilocalized modes and other modes expl…
A model for magnetoresistance in positionally disordered organic materials is presented and solved using percolation theory. The model describes the effects of spin flips on hopping transport by considering the effect of spin dynamics on an effective density of hopping sites. Faster spin-flip transitions open up `spin-blocked' pathways to become viable conduction channels and hence produces magnetoresistance. The magnetoresistance can be found analytically in several regimes, including when the spin-flip time is slower than the hopping time. The ratio of hopping time to the hyperfine precessio…
We present a random matrix approach to study general vibrational properties of stable amorphous solids with translational invariance using the correlated Wishart ensemble. Within this approach, both analytical and numerical methods can be applied. Using the random matrix theory, we found the analytical form of the vibrational density of states and the dynamical structure factor. We demonstrate the presence of the Ioffe-Regel crossover between low-frequency propagating phonons and diffusons at higher frequencies. The reduced vibrational density of states shows the boson peak, which frequency is…
We develop a new method to isolate localized defects from extended vibrational modes in disordered solids. This method augments particle interactions with an artificial potential that acts as a high-pass filter: it preserves small-scale structures while pushing extended vibrational modes to higher frequencies. The low-frequency modes that remain are "bare" defects; they are exponentially localized without the quadrupolar tails associated with elastic interactions. We demonstrate that these localized excitations are excellent predictors of plastic rearrangements in the solid. We characterize se…
Power law distributed fluctuations are known to accompany \emph{terminal} failure in disordered brittle solids. The associated intermittent scale-free behavior is of interest from the fundamental point of view as it emerges universally from an intricate interplay of threshold-type nonlinearity, quenched disorder, and long-range interactions. We use the simplest mean-field description of such systems to show that they can be expected to undergo a transition between brittle and quasi-brittle (ductile) responses. While the former is characterized by a power law distribution of avalanches, in the …
A random matrix approach is used to analyze the vibrational properties of amorphous solids. We investigated a dynamical matrix M=AA^T with non-negative eigenvalues. The matrix A is an arbitrary real NxN sparse random matrix with n independent non-zero elements in each row. The average values <A_{ij}>=0 and dispersion <A_{ij}^2>=V^2 for all non-zero elements. The density of vibrational states g(w) of the matrix M for N,n >> 1 is given by the Wigner quarter circle law with radius independent of N. We argue that for n^2 << N this model can be used to describe the interaction of atoms in amorphous…
The low temperature universal properties in disordered and amorphous solids are considered. We introduce a model that includes two types of two level systems (TLSs), which, based on their local symmetry, interact weakly or strongly with the phonon field. This accounts well for the experimental results, and addresses some long-standing questions: the nature of the TLSs; the smallness and universality of the phonon attenuation, and the energy scale of $3$K below which universality is observed. Our model describes disordered lattices; we also discuss its application to amorphous solids.
Using Gaussian integral transform techniques borrowed from functional-integral field theory and the replica trick we derive a version of the coherent-potential approximation (CPA) suited for describing ($i$) the diffusive (hopping) motion of classical particles in a random environment and ($ii$) the vibrational properties of materials with spatially fluctuating elastic coefficients in topologically disordered materials. The effective medium in the present version of the CPA is not a lattice but a homogeneous and isotropic medium, representing an amorphous material on a mesoscopic scale. The tr…
Quantifying mechanical disorder in solids, either disordered crystals or glassy solids, and understanding its range of variability are of prime importance, e.g.~for discovering structure-properties relations. The bounds on the degree of mechanical fluctuations in disordered solids and how those depend on solids formation history remain unknown. Here, we study a broadly applicable quantifier of mesoscopic mechanical disorder $χ$, defined via the dimensionless fluctuations of the shear modulus, over a wide variety of disordered computer solids and upon varying different control parameters. $χ$ i…
Amorphous solids or glasses are known to exhibit stretched-exponential decay over broad time intervals in several of their macroscopic observables: intermediate scattering function, dielectric relaxation modulus, time-elastic modulus etc. This behaviour is prominent especially near the glass transition. In this Letter we show, on the example of dielectric relaxation, that stretched-exponential relaxation is intimately related to the peculiar lattice dynamics of glasses. By reformulating the Lorentz model of dielectric matter in a more general form, we express the dielectric response as a funct…
The relaxation dynamics and the vibrational spectra of amorphous solids, such as metal alloys, have been intensely investigated as well separated topics in the past. The aim of this review is to summarize recent results in both these areas in an attempt to establish, or unveil, deeper connections between the two phenomena of relaxation and vibration. Theoretical progress in the area of slow relaxation dynamics of liquid and glassy systems and in the area of vibrational spectra of glasses and liquids is reviewed. After laying down a generic modelling framework to connect vibration and relaxatio…
Amorphous solids display numerous universal features in their mechanics, structure, and response. Current models assume heterogeneity in mesoscale elastic properties, but require fine-tuning in order to quantitatively explain vibrational properties. A complete model should derive the magnitude and character of elastic heterogeneity from an initially structureless medium, through a model of the quenching process during which the temperature is rapidly lowered and the solid is formed. Here we propose a field-theoretic model of a quench, and compute structural, mechanical, and vibrational observa…
The two principal ingredients determining the failure modes of disordered solids are the level of heterogeneity and the length scale of the region affected in the solid following a local failure. While the latter facilitates damage nucleation, the former leads to diffused damage, the two extreme failure modes. In this study, using the random fiber bundle model as a prototype for disorder solids, we classify every failure modes that are the results of interplay between these two effects. We obtain scaling criteria for the different modes and propose a general phase diagram that provides a frame…
The Hartree-Fock based diagonalization is a computational method for the investigation of the low-energy properties of correlated electrons in disordered solids. The method is related to the quantum-chemical configuration interaction approach. It consists in diagonalizing the Hamiltonian in a reduced Hilbert space built of the low-energy states of the corresponding disordered Hartree-Fock Hamiltonian. The properties of the method are discussed for the example of the quantum Coulomb glass, a lattice model of electrons in a random potential interacting via long-range Coulomb interaction. Particu…
One of the long-standing issues concerning the thermal properties of amorphous solids is the complex pattern of phonon transport. Recent advances in experiments and computer simulations have indicated a crossover from Rayleigh scattering to viscous damping. A number of theories have been proposed, yet critical tests are missing and the validity of these theories is unclear. In particular, the precise location of the crossover frequency remains controversial, and more critically, even the validity of the Rayleigh scattering itself has been seriously questioned. The present work settles these is…
A theory of vibrational excitations based on power-law spatial correlations in the elastic constants (or equivalently in the internal stress) is derived, in order to determine the vibrational density of states $D(ω)$ of disordered solids. The results provide the first prediction of a boson peak in amorphous materials where spatial correlations in the internal stresses (or elastic constants) are of power-law form, as is often the case in experimental systems, leading to logarithmic enhancement of (Rayleigh) phonon attenuation. A logarithmic correction of the form $\sim -ω^{2}\lnω$ is predicted …
Recently, progress has been made in the understanding of anomalous vibrational excitations in amorphous solids. In the lowest-frequency region, the vibrational spectrum follows a non-Debye quartic law, which persists up to zero frequency without any frequency gap. This gapless vibrational density of states (vDOS) suggests that glasses are on the verge of instability. This feature of marginal stability is now highlighted as a key concept in the theories of glasses. In particular, the elasticity theory based on marginal stability predicts the gapless vDOS. However, this theory yields a quadratic…
Disordered mechanical systems with high connectivity represent a limit opposite to the more familiar case of disordered crystals. Individual ions in a crystal are subjected essentially to nearest-neighbor interactions. In contrast, the systems studied in this paper have all their degrees of freedom coupled to each other. Thus, the problem of linearized small oscillations of such systems involves two full positive-definite and non-commuting matrices, as opposed to the sparse matrices associated with disordered crystals. Consequently, the familiar methods for determining the averaged vibrational…
Our lives are surrounded by a rich assortment of disordered materials. In particular, glasses are well known as dense, amorphous materials, whereas gels exist in low-density, disordered states. Recent progress has provided a significant step forward in understanding the material properties of glasses, such as mechanical, vibrational, and transport properties. In contrast, our understanding of particulate physical gels is still highly limited. Here, using molecular dynamics simulations, we study a simple model of particulate physical gels, the Lennard-Jones (LJ) gels, and provide a comprehensiv…
The low-temperature properties of glasses present important differences with respect to crystalline matter. In particular, models such as the Debye model of solids, which assume the existence of an underlying regular lattice, predict that the specific heat of solids varies with the cube of temperature at low temperatures. Since the 1970s' at least, it is a well established experimental fact that the specific heat of glasses is instead just linear in $T$ at $T \sim 1K$, and presents a pronounced peak when normalized by $T^{3}$, known as the boson peak. Here we present a new approach which sugge…
The relevant parameters at the microstructure scale that govern the macroscopic toughness of disordered brittle materials are investigated theoretically. We focus on planar crack propagation and describe the front evolution as the propagation of a long-range elastic line within a plane with random distribution of toughness. Our study reveals two regimes: in the collective pinning regime, the macroscopic toughness can be expressed as a function of a few parameters only, namely the average and the standard deviation of the local toughness distribution and the correlation lengths of the heterogen…
