Effect of annealing on the nature of the yielding transition of amorphous solids

Recently it has been demonstrated employing athermal quasi-static cyclic shear that an atomistic model glass former exhibits a sharp yielding transition across a sharply defined critical amplitude [1], which is further characterized by strain localization at the post yield regime [2], and the attainment of low energy structures approaching the yielding point. Here, we study the applicability of these results to a model of silica, and further, study the effect of annealing on the nature of yielding in both the model systems. We analyse the manner in which the discontinuous nature of the transition changes with annealing and compare our results with recent results analysing the effect of annealing in glasses [4].

References:

[1] P. Leishangthem, A. D. S. Parmar, and S. Sastry, Nature
Communications 8, 14653 (2017)

[2] A. D. S. Parmar, S. Kumar, and S. Sastry, Phys. Rev. X 9, 021018 (2019)

[3] I. Saika-Voivod, F. Sciortino, and P. H. Poole, Phys. Rev. E 69,
041503 (2004)

[4] M. Ozawa et al. PNAS 115, 6656 (2018).