Avalanches and deformation in glasses and disordered systems

Alberto Rosso, James P. Sethna, Matthieu Wyart

Published 2022-08-08Version 1

In this chapter, we discuss avalanches in glasses and disordered systems, and the macroscopic dynamical behavior that they mediate. We briefly review three classes of systems where avalanches are observed: depinning transition of disordered interfaces, yielding of amorphous materials, and the jamming transition. Without extensive formalism, we discuss results gleaned from theoretical approaches -- mean-field theory, scaling and exponent relations, the renormalization group, and a few results from replica theory. We focus both on the remarkably sophisticated physics of avalanches and on relatively new approaches to the macroscopic flow behavior exhibited past the depinning/yielding transition.