Phase transitions of interacting elastic defects

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Abstract
We have investigated a model of randomly placed defects with internal degrees of freedom which interact via elastic strain fields. Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling indicate that two spin-glass phase transitions occur: one for the diagonal components of the defect stress tensor and the other for the off-diagonal components. The quenched ground state of the off-diagonal components exhibits antiferroelastic correlations while the diagonal components do not. We predict the fourth-order elastic susceptibilities associated with the defects diverge at the transition temperatures.