Elastic interfaces on disordered substrates: From mean-field depinning to yielding

Abstract

We consider a model of an elastic manifold driven on a disordered energy landscape, with generalized long range elasticity. Varying the form of the elastic kernel by progressively allowing for the existence of zero-modes, the model interpolates smoothly between mean field depinning and finite dimensional yielding. We find that the critical exponents of the model change smoothly in this process. Also, we show that in all cases the Herschel-Buckley exponent of the flowcurve depends on the analytical form of the microscopic pinning potential. This is a compelling indication that within the present elastoplastic description yielding in finite dimension $d\geq 2$ is a mean-field transition.