Anomalous stress fluctuations in athermal two-dimensional amorphous solids

We numerically study the local stress distribution within athermal, isotropically stressed, mechanically stable, packings of bidisperse frictionless disks above the jamming transition in two dimensions. Considering the Fourier transform of the local stress, we find evidence for algebraically increasing fluctuations in both isotropic and anisotropic components of the stress tensor at small wave numbers, contrary to recent theoretical predictions. Such increasing fluctuations imply a lack of self-averaging of the stress on large length scales. The crossover to these increasing fluctuations defines a length scale ℓ_{0}, however, it appears that ℓ_{0} does not vary much with packing fraction ϕ, nor does ℓ_{0} seem to be diverging as ϕ approaches the jamming ϕ_{J}. We also find similar large length scale fluctuations of stress in the inherent states of a quenched Lennard-Jones liquid, leading us to speculate that such fluctuations may be a general property of amorphous solids in two dimensions.