Global memory from local hysteresis in an amorphous solid

A disordered material that cannot relax to equilibrium, such as an amorphous or glassy solid, responds to deformation in a way that depends on its past. In experiments we train a two-dimensional athermal amorphous solid with oscillatory shear, and show that a suitable readout protocol reveals the sh...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review research Vol. 2; no. 1; p. 012004
Main Authors: Keim, Nathan C., Hass, Jacob, Kroger, Brian, Wieker, Devin
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 06-01-2020
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A disordered material that cannot relax to equilibrium, such as an amorphous or glassy solid, responds to deformation in a way that depends on its past. In experiments we train a two-dimensional athermal amorphous solid with oscillatory shear, and show that a suitable readout protocol reveals the shearing amplitude. When shearing alternates between two amplitudes, signatures of both values are retained only if the smaller one is applied last. We show that these behaviors arise because individual clusters of rearrangements are hysteretic and dissipative, and because different clusters respond differently to shear. These roles for hysteresis and disorder are reminiscent of the return-point memory seen in ferromagnets and many other systems. Accordingly, we show how a simple model of a ferromagnet can reproduce key results of our experiments and of previous simulations. Unlike ferromagnets, amorphous solids' disorder is unquenched; they require “training” to develop this behavior.
ISSN:2643-1564
2643-1564
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.012004