Acoustic excitations and elastic heterogeneities in disordered solids

Abstract

In the recent years, much attention has been devoted to the inhomogeneous nature of the mechanical response at the nano-scale in disordered solids. Clearly, the elastic heterogeneities that have been characterized in this context are expected to strongly impact the nature of the sound waves which, in contrast to the case of perfect crystals, cannot be completely rationalized in terms of phonons. Building on previous work on a toy model showing an amorphisation transition [Mizuno H, Mossa S, Barrat JL (2013) EPL {\bf 104}:56001], we investigate the relationship between sound waves and elastic heterogeneities in a unified framework, by continuously interpolating from the perfect crystal, through increasingly defective phases, to fully developed glasses. We provide strong evidence of a direct correlation between sound waves features and the extent of the heterogeneous mechanical response at the nano-scale.