Is the brittle-to-ductile change in glass yielding a critical point? · revision history

Revision 2

Accepted · core change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title · changed
Revision 1: Is the brittle-to-ductile change in glass yielding a critical point
Revision 2: Is the brittle-to-ductile change in glass yielding a critical point?
Plain
Glasses cooled quickly yield gradually when sheared, while slowly cooled glasses fail suddenly along a crack-like band. Whether a sharp critical point separates these two behaviours in large samples is disputed.
Precise · changed · core
Revision 1: Under athermal quasistatic shear, poorly annealed glasses yield smoothly (ductile) and well-annealed glasses yield through a macroscopic stress drop (brittle). A 2018 scenario maps this onto a random-field-Ising-like critical point at a preparation temperature T_p,c. Determine whether this critical point exists in the thermodynamic limit in $d = 2\ \text{and}\ 3$, and its universality class, or whether brittle failure occurs for every preparation once the system is large enough.
Revision 2: Under athermal quasistatic shear, poorly annealed glasses yield smoothly (ductile) and well-annealed glasses yield through a macroscopic stress drop (brittle). A 2018 scenario maps this onto a random-field-Ising-like critical point at a preparation temperature $T_p,c$. Determine whether this critical point exists in the thermodynamic limit in $d = 2\ \text{and}\ 3$, and its universality class, or whether brittle failure occurs for every preparation once the system is large enough.
Settled by
Finite-size scaling of the stress-drop distribution and susceptibilities across preparation temperature for systems large enough to settle the limit, consistent with an elastoplastic or field theory.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
yes-no
References
(empty)
Literature status
contested
Status note
Finite-size studies since 2020 disagree on whether the ductile regime survives in the thermodynamic limit (2026).
Posed since
2018

Decisions