No Arabic abstract
Interfaces advancing through random media represent a number of different problems in physics, biology and other disciplines. Here, we study the pinning/depinning transition of the prototypical non-equilibrium interfacial model, i.e. the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, advancing in a disordered medium. We analyze separately the cases of positive and negative non-linearity coefficients, which are believed to exhibit qualitatively different behavior: the positive case shows a continuous transition that can be related to directed-percolation-depinning while in the negative case there is a discontinuous transition and faceted interfaces appear. Some studies have argued from different perspectives that both cases share the same universal behavior. Here, by using a number of computational and scaling techniques we shed light on this puzzling situation and conclude that the two cases are intrinsically different.
We study Levy walks in quenched disordered one-dimensional media, with scatterers spaced according to a long-tailed distribution. By analyzing the scaling relations for the random-walk probability and for the resistivity in the equivalent electric problem, we obtain the asymptotic behavior of the mean square displacement as a function of the exponent characterizing the scatterers distribution. We demonstrate that in quenched media different average procedures can display different asymptotic behavior. In particular, we estimate the moments of the displacement averaged over processes starting from scattering sites, in analogy with recent experiments. Our results are compared with numerical simulations, with excellent agreement.
We make a review of the two principal models that allows to explain the imbibition of fluid in porous media. These models, that belong to the directed percolation depinning (DPD) universality class, where introduced simultaneously by the Tang and Leschhorn [Phys. Rev A 45, R8309 (1992)] and Buldyrev et al. [Phys. Rev. A 45, R8313 (1992)] and reviewed by Braunstein et al. [J. Phys. A 32, 1801 (1999); Phys. Rev. E 59, 4243 (1999)]. Even these models have been classified in the same universality class than the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation [Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 889, (1986)] with quenched noise (QKPZ), the contributions to the growing mechanisms are quite different. The lateral contribution in the DPD models, leads to an increasing of the roughness near the criticality while in the QKPZ equation this contribution always flattens the roughness. These results suggest that the QKPZ equation does not describe properly the DPD models even when the exponents derived from this equation are similar to the one obtained from the simulations of these models. This fact is confirmed trough the deduced analytical equation for the Tang and Leschhorn model. This equation has the same symmetries than the QKPZ one but its coefficients depend on the balance between the driving force and the quenched noise.
The effects of quenched disorder on nonequilibrium phase transitions in the directed percolation universality class are revisited. Using a strong-disorder energy-space renormalization group, it is shown that for any amount of disorder the critical behavior is controlled by an infinite-randomness fixed point in the universality class of the random transverse-field Ising models. The experimental relevance of our results are discussed.
We show that near a second order phase transition in a two-component elastic medium of size L in two dimensions, where the local elastic deformation-order parameter couplings can break the inversion symmetry of the order parameter, the elastic modulii diverges with the variance of the local displacement fluctuations scaling as $[ln(L/a_0)]^{2/3}$ and the local displacement correlation function scaling as $[ln(r/a_0)]^{2/3}$ for weak inversion-asymmetryThe elastic constants can also vanish for system size exceeding a non-universal value, making the system unstable for strong asymmetry, where a 0 is a small-scale cut-off. We show that the elastic deformation-order parameter couplings can make the phase transition first order, when the elastic modulii do not diverge, but shows a jump proportional to the jump in the order parameter, across the transition temperature. For a bulk system, the elastic stiffness does not diverge for weak asymmetry, but can vanish across a second order transition giving instability for strong asymmetry, or displays jumps across a first order transition. In-vitro experiments on binary fluids embedded in a polymerized network, magnetic colloidal crystals or magnetic crystals could test these predictions.
We study the geometrical characteristic of quasi-static fractures in disordered media, using iterated conformal maps to determine the evolution of the fracture pattern. This method allows an efficient and accurate solution of the Lame equations without resorting to lattice models. Typical fracture patterns exhibit increased ramification due to the increase of the stress at the tips. We find the roughness exponent of the experimentally relevant backbone of the fracture pattern; it crosses over from about 0.5 for small scales to about 0.75 for large scales, in excellent agreement with experiments. We propose that this cross-over reflects the increased ramification of the fracture pattern.