Predicting plasticity with soft vibrational modes: from dislocations to glasses

Abstract

We show that quasi localized low-frequency modes in the vibrational spectrum can be used to construct soft spots, or regions vulnerable to rearrangement, which serve as a universal tool for the identification of flow defects in solids. We show that soft spots not only encode spatial information, via their location, but also directional information, via directors for particles within each soft spot. Single crystals with isolated dislocations exhibit low-frequency phonon modes that localize at the core, and their polarization pattern predicts the motion of atoms during elementary dislocation glide in exquisite detail. Even in polycrystals and disordered solids, we find that the directors associated with particles in soft spots are highly correlated with the direction of particle displacements in rearrangements.

References in corpus (1)

• Geometric interpretation of pre-vitrification in hard sphere liquids

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Identifying structural flow defects in disordered solids using machine learning methods
• Anisotropic Structural Predictor in Glassy Materials
• Role of disorder in finite-amplitude shear of a 2D jammed material
• Elastic consequences of a single plastic event: towards a realistic account of structural disorder and shear wave propagation in models of flowing amorphous solids