X-Message-Number: 29403 References: <> From: David Stodolsky <> Subject: Mesoscopic fluctuations, aging and intermittency in complex d... Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 10:14:36 +0200 Mesoscopic fluctuations, aging and intermittency in complex dynamics Paolo Sibani D 317, HC , Copenhagen Univ. 11. apr. 2007 13:15 Resume The term physical aging was coined nearly three decades ago to describe the slow and decelerating changes of physical properties in polymers and other soft materials. Spin-glass experiments spurred further interest, and aging phenomena have ever since been investigated by a large and diverse crowd. Thanks to these efforts, aging is now widely recognized to be a general feature of non- equilibrium dynamics in complex metastable systems, including e.g. type II superconductors, glasses, granular materials, and soft condensed matter. As demonstrated in recent studies of fluctuating signals from mesoscopic systems, two types of events may occur in an aging systems: reversible, equilibrium-like fluctuations, which produce a Gaussian peak with zero average in the Probability Density Function (PDF) of the signal, and rare, socalled intermittent events, which appear as an exponential tail and may indicate irreversible changes from one metastable region, or valley', in configuration space to a different one. In the talk, I will introduce the topic and discuss a theory of intermittency in glassy dynamics. The focus is on the close link between record breaking reversible fluctuations on the one side, and physically observable intermittent events or quakes' on the other. This idea leads to analytical predictions for the form of the fluctuation spectra of the energy, of the autocorrelation functions, and of the linear response functions of aging systems. Illustrative examples will be given. Arrang r Bjarne Andresen David Stodolsky Skype: davidstodolsky Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29403