Ultra Slow Universal Dynamics of Elastic Interfaces in Random Media

ALEJANDRO B. KOLTON

Barcelona

Seminario; Condensed Matter Seminar, Departament de Física Fonamental, Barcelona; 2010

Departament de Física Fonamental, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona

Ultra Slow Universal Dynamics of Elastic Interfaces in Random MediaUnderstanding the dynamics of elastic systems in disordered media is relevant for many experimental situations, such as the propagation of magnetic domain walls in ferromagnets, electric domain walls in ferroelectrics, contact lines of liquids in partial wetting, crack propagation, superconducting vortex lattices, charge density waves, or even earthquakes. All these systems share the competition between elastic forces which tend to order the system and disorder that seeks to destroy their flat or periodic structure, yielding glassy behavior. I will discuss the particularly interesting case of driven elastic interfaces, relevant for domain walls, where the competition between elasticity and disorder dramatically manifests as an ultra slow collective creep motion at low driving fields. I will describe an essentially exact new algorithm which is able to target the universal properties of this motion and its consequences for experimental systems.