Predicting activation-barrier and plasticity-onset statistics in a model of glasses
Abstract
A recently introduced anharmonic mean-field model unifiedly reproduced a broad range of low-temperature glass phenomena --- including harmonic nonphononic spectral properties, linear micromechanics and strongly driven elasto-plastic dynamics --- indicating that its underlying energy landscape is intrinsically glassy. Here, we apply a nonlinear modes framework to the model and derive analytic predictions for the asymptotic distributions of activation barriers p(ΔU) ∼ (ΔU)1/4 and the external force needed for the onset of plasticity p(fc)∼ fc2/3, for their extreme-value scaling and for ⟨ΔU⟩ beyond the asymptotic regime. These predictions are expected to equally apply to the mean-field model and to finite-dimensional glasses. We develop efficient algorithms for sampling minima and saddles of the model's glassy potential energy landscape, and quantitatively confirm the theoretical predictions. This progress is enabled by identifying a subset of collective degrees of freedom that are physically relevant for activated glassy dynamics, which like the theoretical predictions should apply to realistic glasses.
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BibTeX
@misc{suda2026predicting,
title = {{Predicting activation-barrier and plasticity-onset statistics in a model of glasses}},
author = {Makoto Suda and Edan Lerner and Eran Bouchbinder},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.09619},
eprint = {2610.09619},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09619},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Predicting activation-barrier and plasticity-onset statistics in a model of glasses
AU - Makoto Suda
AU - Edan Lerner
AU - Eran Bouchbinder
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.09619
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09619
AB - A recently introduced anharmonic mean-field model unifiedly reproduced a broad range of low-temperature glass phenomena --- including harmonic nonphononic spectral properties, linear micromechanics and strongly driven elasto-plastic dynamics --- indicating that its underlying energy landscape is intrinsically glassy. Here, we apply a nonlinear modes framework to the model and derive analytic predictions for the asymptotic distributions of activation barriers p(ΔU) ∼ (ΔU)^1/4 and the external force needed for the onset of plasticity p(f_c)∼ f_c^2/3, for their extreme-value scaling and for ⟨ΔU⟩ beyond the asymptotic regime. These predictions are expected to equally apply to the mean-field model and to finite-dimensional glasses. We develop efficient algorithms for sampling minima and saddles of the model's glassy potential energy landscape, and quantitatively confirm the theoretical predictions. This progress is enabled by identifying a subset of collective degrees of freedom that are physically relevant for activated glassy dynamics, which like the theoretical predictions should apply to realistic glasses.
ER -