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Universal distribution of threshold forces at the depinning transition

Andrei A. Fedorenko, Pierre Le Doussal, Kay Joerg Wiese

cond-mat.dis-nnarXiv:cond-mat/0607229

Abstract

We study the distribution of threshold forces at the depinning transition for an elastic system of finite size, driven by an external force in a disordered medium at zero temperature. Using the functional renormalization group (FRG) technique, we compute the distribution of pinning forces in the quasi-static limit. This distribution is universal up to two parameters, the average critical force, and its width. We discuss possible definitions for threshold forces in finite-size samples. We show how our results compare to the distribution of the latter computed recently within a numerical simulation of the so-called critical configuration.

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