Encoding of memory in sheared amorphous solids.
We show that memory can be encoded in a model amorphous solid subjected to athermal oscillatory shear deformations, and in an analogous spin model with disordered interactions, sharing the feature of a deformable energy landscape. When these systems are subjected to oscillatory shear deformation, they retain memory of the deformation amplitude imposed in the training phase, when the amplitude is below a "localization" threshold. Remarkably, multiple persistent memories can be stored using such an athermal, noise-free, protocol. The possibility of such memory is shown to be linked to the presence of plastic deformations and associated limit cycles traversed by the system, which exhibit avalanche statistics also seen in related contexts.
Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Davide
D
Fiocco
Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland and Laboratoire de Physique de Solides, UMR 8502, Bât. 510, Université Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France.
Giuseppe
G
Foffi
TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, 21 Brundavan Colony, Narsingi, 500075 Hyderabad, India and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur Campus, 560064 Bangalore, India.
Srikanth
S
Sastry