Static friction on the fly: velocity depinning transitions of lubricants in motion

Abstract

The dragging velocity of a model solid lubricant confined between sliding periodic substrates exhibits a phase transition between two regimes, respectively with quantized and with continuous lubricant center-of-mass velocity. The transition, occurring for increasing external driving force F_ext acting on the lubricant, displays a large hysteresis, and has the features of depinning transitions in static friction, only taking place on the fly. Although different in nature, this phenomenon appears isomorphic to a static Aubry depinning transition in a Frenkel-Kontorova model, the role of particles now taken by the moving kinks of the lubricant-substrate interface. We suggest a possible realization in 2D optical lattice experiments.

5 pages, 4 figures, revtex, in print in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (4)

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• Exactly quantized dynamics of classical incommensurate sliders
• Asymmetric frictional sliding between incommensurate surfaces
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