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Origin of the slow dynamics and the aging of a soft glass

Sylvain Mazoyer, Luca Cipelletti, Laurence Ramos

cond-mat.softarXiv:cond-mat/0603739

Abstract

We study by light microscopy a soft glass consisting of a compact arrangement of polydisperse elastic spheres. We show that its slow and non-stationary dynamics results from the unavoidable small fluctuations of temperature, which induce intermittent local mechanical shear in the sample, because of thermal expansion and contraction. Temperature-induced shear provokes both reversible and irreversible rearrangements whose amplitude decreases with time, leading to an exponential slowing down of the dynamics with sample age.

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