Geometric origin of excess low-frequency vibrational modes in amorphous solids
Abstract
Glasses have a large excess of low-frequency vibrational modes in comparison with crystalline solids. We show that such a feature is a necessary consequence of the geometry generic to a marginally connected solid. In particular, we analyze the density of states of a recently simulated system, comprised of weakly compressed spheres at zero temperature. We account for the observed a) constancy of the density of modes with frequency, b) appearance of a low-frequency cutoff, and c) power-law increase of this cutoff with compression. We predict a length scale below which the boundary conditions strongly affect the system.Keywords
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