Consequences of Disorder on the Stability of Amorphous Solids

Highly acurate numerical simulations are employed to highlight the subtle but important differences in the mechanical stability of perfect crystalline solids versus amorphous solids. We stress the difference between strain values at which the shear modulus vanishes and strain values at which a plastic instability insues. The temperature dependence of the yield strain is computed for the two types of solids, showing different scaling laws: $\gamma_{_{Y}}\simeq \gamma_{_{Y}}^{0}-C_1 T^{1/3}$ for crystals versus $\gamma_{_{Y}}\simeq \gamma_{_{Y}}^{0}- C_2 T^{2/3}$ for amorphous solids.