title: Slow relaxation and aging phenomena at the nanoscale in granular materials.
abstract: Granular matter exhibits a rich variety of dynamic behaviors, for which the role of thermal fluctuations is usually ignored. Here we show that thermal fluctuations can pronouncedly affect contacting nanoscale asperities at grain interfaces and brightly manifest themselves through the influence on nonlinear-acoustic effects. The proposed mechanism based on intrinsic bistability of nanoscale contacts comprises a wealth of slow-dynamics regimes including slow relaxations and aging as universal properties of a wide class of systems with metastable states.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics, RAS, Uljanova St. 46, 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia and LUNAM Université, Université du Maine, CNRS, LAUM UMR 6613, avenue O. Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans, France and Nizhny Novgorod State University, avenue Gagarina 23, 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
authors.forename: V Y
authors.initials: VY
authors.lastname: Zaitsev
authors.affiliation: LUNAM Université, Université du Maine, CNRS, LAUM UMR 6613, avenue O. Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans, France.
authors.forename: V E
authors.initials: VE
authors.lastname: Gusev
authors.affiliation: LUNAM Université, Université du Maine, CNRS, LAUM UMR 6613, avenue O. Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans, France.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Tournat
authors.affiliation: LUNAM Université, IFSTTAR, site de Nantes, Route de Bouaye CS4, 44344 Bouguenais Cedex, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Richard