Specific heat of classical disordered elastic systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the specific heat of disordered elastic systems, particularly vortex lattices in the Bragg glass phase, revealing disorder's positive, linear, and temperature-dependent contribution that surpasses other effects.

Contribution

It applies the replica variational method to compute the specific heat of pinned vortons, highlighting the disorder's significant thermodynamic role in classical disordered elastic systems.

Findings

Disorder contributes positively to specific heat, linear at low T.

Disorder contribution exhibits a maximum at certain temperatures.

Droplet effects are subdominant at weak disorder in 3D.

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of disordered elastic systems, applied to vortex lattices in the Bragg glass phase. Using the replica variational method we compute the specific heat of pinned vortons in the classical limit. We find that the contribution of disorder is positive, linear at low temperature, and exhibits a maximum. It is found to be important compared to other contributions, e.g. core electrons, mean field and non linear elasticity that we evaluate. The contribution of droplets is subdominant at weak disorder in $d=3$.