Fluctuating hydrodynamics and diffusion in amorphous solids

Abstract

The fluctuating hydrodynamic description for an isotropic fluid is extended to include the displacement field u, reflecting the freezing of the local structures in an amorphous solid. The fluctuating nonlinear equations for the set of hydrodynamic variables including u has been obtained. The role of u is manifested through its longitudinal part, i.e., ∇·u, in terms of which we define the variable c(x,t). It refers to the diffusion of the free volume or vacancies, signifying configurational rearrangements in the amorphous solid. The analysis here shows that one recovers the earlier result obtained by Das and Mazenko [Phys. Rev. A 34, 2265 (1986)] for mode coupling models of a glass transition, where the time scales associated with the relaxation of the density fluctuations and that of the vacancy diffusion can be comparable.