Rigidity in Condensed Matter and Its Origin in Configurational Constraint

S Saw and P Harrowell, PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 116, 137801 (2016).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.137801

Motivated by the formal argument that a nonzero shear modulus is the result of averaging over a constrained configuration space, we demonstrate that the shear modulus calculated over a range of temperatures and averaging times can be expressed (relative to its infinite frequency value) as a single function of the mean squared displacement. This result is shown to hold for both a glass-liquid and a crystal-liquid system.

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