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Updated: Sep 23, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Anomalous phonon dispersion near yielding in athermal crystals
Fumiaki Nakai1, Michio Otsuki2, Kuniyasu Saitoh3
1The University of Osaka, Department of Earth and Space Science, 1-1 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan.
Abstract:
Vibrational properties of ordered athermal solids near yielding remain poorly understood. We show that yielding in a sheared crystal is governed not by a single localized instability but by directionally extended multimode softening that forms a cross-shaped low-frequency region in wave number space. Near yielding, the acoustic dispersion ω∼k is replaced by ω∼k^{2} along the soft direction, and the vibrational density of states crosses over from Debye to non-Debye scaling, with a diverging length scale. We analytically derive these scaling laws.
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