Field theory of avalanches at depinning, and relation to sandpiles

December 12 2018
Types d’événements
Séminaire SPEC
Kay Wiese
SPEC Salle Itzykson, Bât.774
12/12/2018
from 11:00 to 12:00

Magnetic domain walls, charge density waves, contact lines, and cracks are all elastic systems, pinned by disorder. Changing an external parameter, they remain stuck before advancing in sudden rapid motion, termed avalanche.
After an introduction into the phenomenology, I present work based on the functional renormalization group. This allows us to account for spatial correlations, and predict exponents and the avalanche shapes beyond mean field.
Interestingly, these systems are equivalent to sandpile models: the Manna sandpile to disordered elastic manifolds, and the Abelian sandpile to charge density waves, and loop-erased random walks.

A coffee break will be served at 11h00. The seminar will be given in English.

LPT-ENS Paris