Avalanches in Tip-Driven Interfaces in Random Media

TL;DR

This study investigates avalanche behaviors in one-dimensional elastic interfaces driven at a single point, revealing universal power-law distributions and a crossover between different driving regimes, with implications for experimental systems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of avalanche statistics in tip-driven interfaces, highlighting universal exponents and the crossover phenomenon distinct from uniform driving cases.

Findings

Power-law distributed global and local avalanche sizes with universal exponents.

Identification of a crossover between uniform and point-driven avalanche behaviors.

The crossover scale depends on the ratio of spring stiffness to interface elasticity.

Abstract

We analyse by numerical simulations and scaling arguments the avalanche statistics of 1-dimensional elastic interfaces in random media driven at a single point. Both global and local avalanche sizes are power-law distributed, with universal exponents given by the depinning roughness exponent $\zeta$ and the interface dimension $d$, and distinct from their values in the uniformly driven case. A crossover appears between uniformly driven behaviour for small avalanches, and point driven behaviour for large avalanches. The scale of the crossover is controlled by the ratio between the stiffness of the pulling spring and the elasticity of the interface; it is visible both in the global and local avalanche-size distributions, as in the average spatial avalanche shape. Our results are relevant to model experiments involving locally driven elastic manifolds at low temperatures, such as magnetic domain walls or vortex lines in superconductors.