title: Criticality in the Approach to Failure in Amorphous Solids.
abstract: Failure of amorphous solids is fundamental to various phenomena, including landslides and earthquakes. Recent experiments indicate that highly plastic regions form elongated structures that are especially apparent near the maximal shear stress Σmax where failure occurs. This observation suggested that Σmax acts as a critical point where the length scale of those structures diverges, possibly causing macroscopic transient shear bands. Here, we argue instead that the entire solid phase (Σ<Σmax) is critical, that plasticity always involves system-spanning events, and that their magnitude diverges at Σmax independently of the presence of shear bands. We relate the statistics and fractal properties of these rearrangements to an exponent θ that captures the stability of the material, which is observed to vary continuously with stress, and we confirm our predictions in elastoplastic models.
authors.affiliation: Center for Soft Matter Research, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: DISAT, Politecnico Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, I-10129 Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gueudré
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (UMR CNRS 8626), Université de Paris-Sud, Orsay Cedex 91405, France.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rosso
authors.affiliation: Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Matthieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wyart