Long-range correlations in pinned athermal networks

Universal stress correlations in crystalline and amorphous packings

We present a universal characterization of stress correlations in athermal systems, across crystalline to amorphous packings. Via numerical analysis of static configurations of particles interacting through harmonic as well as Lennard-Jones potentials, for a variety of preparation protocols and ranges of microscopic disorder, we show that the properties of the stress correlations at large lengthscales are surprisingly universal across all situations, independent of structural correlations, or the correlations in orientational order. In the near-crystalline limit, we present exact results for the stress correlations for both models, which work surprisingly well at large lengthscales, even in the amorphous phase. Finally, we study the differences in stress fluctuations across the amorphization transition, where stress correlations reveal the loss of periodicity in the structure at short lengthscales with increasing disorder.

Green's functions for random resistor networks

We analyze random resistor networks through a study of lattice Green's functions in arbitrary dimensions. We develop a systematic disorder perturbation expansion to describe the weak disorder regime of such a system. We use this formulation to compute ensemble-averaged nodal voltages and bond currents in a hierarchical fashion. We verify the validity of this expansion with direct numerical simulations of a square lattice with resistances at each bond exponentially distributed. Additionally, we construct a formalism to recursively obtain the exact Green's functions for finitely many disordered bonds. We provide explicit expressions for lattices with up to four disordered bonds, which can be used to predict nodal voltage distributions for arbitrarily large disorder strengths. Finally, we introduce a novel order parameter that measures the overlap between the bond current and the optimal path (the path of least resistance), for a given resistance configuration, which helps to characterize the weak and strong disorder regimes of the system.

Emergent power-law interactions in near-crystalline membranes

We derive exact results for the fluctuations in energy produced by microscopic disorder in near-crystalline athermal systems. Our formalism captures the heterogeneity in the elastic energy of polydisperse soft disks in energy-minimized configurations. We use this to predict the distribution of interaction energy between two defects in a disordered background. We show that this interaction energy displays a disorder-averaged power-law behavior 〈δE〉∼Δ^{-4} at large distances Δ between the defects. These interactions upon disorder average also display the sixfold symmetry of the underlying reference crystal. Additionally, we show that the fluctuations in the interaction energy encode the athermal correlations introduced by the disordered background. We verify our predictions with energy-minimized configurations of polydisperse soft disks in two dimensions.

Disorder perturbation expansion for athermal crystals

We introduce a perturbation expansion for athermal systems that allows an exact determination of displacement fields away from the crystalline state as a response to disorder. We show that the displacement fields in energy-minimized configurations of particles interacting through central potentials with microscopic disorder can be obtained as a series expansion in the strength of the disorder. We introduce a hierarchy of force-balance equations that allows an order-by-order determination of the displacement fields, with the solutions at lower orders providing sources for the higher-order solutions. This allows the simultaneous force-balance equations to be solved, within a hierarchical perturbation expansion to arbitrary accuracy. We present exact results for an isotropic defect introduced into the crystalline ground state at linear order and second order in our expansion. We show that the displacement fields produced by the defect display interesting self-similar properties at every order. We derive a |δr|∼1/r and |δf|∼1/r^{2} decay for the displacement fields and excess interparticle forces at large distances r away from the defect. Finally, we derive nonlinear corrections introduced by the interactions between defects at second order in our expansion. We verify our exact results with displacement fields obtained from energy-minimized configurations of soft disks.