Nonequilibrium dynamics of glassy materials
Ludovic Berthier


Abstract
In the last few years, slow or glassy dynamics has been encountered in a wide variety of experimental systems: structural and spin glasses, but also complex fluids, high-Tc superconductors, granular materials, etc. Theoretical approaches to deal with slow dynamics have mainly focused on the very slow relaxational dynamics, i.e. on the aging regime. Experimentally, however, the driven dynamics is also very relevant. It amounts for instance to the study of the behavior of complex fluids under shear (rheology), of superconductors in presence of a current, or of gently shaken powders (compaction experiments).

In this talk, we present the different possible theoretical approaches to describe these nonequilibrium situations, and focus then on the results obtained for a class of mean-field models which have been successfully used to describe the aging regime. When a driving force is added, a stationary nonequilibrium regime is reached, for which we show that a concept of (effective) temperature may be precisely defined. We also compare these theoretical predictions to numerical and experimental results.

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Elenco dei partecipanti al convegno di Bari.

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