2003/02/14 by M. Cristina Marchetti, A. Alan Middleton, Karl Saunders +1
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.107002
published as Physical Review Letters 91, 107002 (2003) [4 pages] · 4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2003/02/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
Extended systems driven through strong disorder are modeled generically using coarse-grained degrees of freedom that interact elastically in the directions parallel to the driving force and that slip along at least one of the directions transverse to the motion. A realization of such a model is a collection of elastic channels with transverse viscous couplings. In the infinite range limit this model has a tricritical point separating a region where the depinning is continuous, in the universality class of elastic depinning, from a region where depinning is hysteretic. Many of the collective transport models discussed in the literature are special cases of the generic model.