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Published on: May 15, 2017
Yielding Is an Absorbing Phase Transition with Vanishing Critical Fluctuations
Tristan Jocteur1, Shana Figueiredo1, Kirsten Martens1
1<a href="https://ror.org/02rx3b187">Université Grenoble-Alpes</a>, <a href="https://ror.org/02feahw73">CNRS</a>, LIPhy, 38000 Grenoble, France.
Abstract:
The yielding transition in athermal complex fluids can be interpreted as an absorbing phase transition between an elastic, absorbing state with high mesoscopic degeneracy and a flowing, active state. We characterize quantitatively this phase transition in an elastoplastic model under fixed applied shear stress, using a finite-size scaling analysis. We find vanishing critical fluctuations of the order parameter (i.e., the shear rate), and relate this property to the convex character of the phase transition (β>1). We locate yielding within a family of models akin to fixed-energy sandpile (FES) models, only with long-range redistribution kernels with zero modes that result from mechanical equilibrium. For redistribution kernels with sufficiently fast decay, this family of models belongs to a short-range universality class distinct from the conserved directed percolation class of usual FES, which is induced by zero modes.
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