Looking at friction through "shearons"

TL;DR

This paper investigates how shearons, collective modes in a monolayer between rigid plates, influence frictional behavior, revealing potential for friction control through manipulation of these modes.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of shearons as key collective modes affecting friction, and demonstrates how their manipulation can control frictional properties.

Findings

Shearons dominate the frictional response of the system.

Static friction and slip events are explained by shearon dynamics.

Introducing defects can modify shearons and thus control friction.

Abstract

We study the response to shear of a one-dimensional monolayer embedded between two rigid plates, where the upper one is externally driven. The shear is shown to excite ``shearons'', which are collective modes of the embedded system with well defined spatial and temporal pattern, and which dominate the frictional properties of the driven system. We demonstrate that static friction, stick-slip events, and memory effects are well described in terms of the creation and/or annihilation of a shearon. This raises the possibility to control friction by modifying the excited shearon, which we examplify by introducing a defect at the bottom plate.