Thermodynamic-limit vanishing of Tc(L) beyond the present elastoplastic framework

Determine whether the extrapolation that the system-size-dependent critical temperature Tc(L) decreases to zero as the system size L tends to infinity—implying that arbitrarily small but finite temperatures destabilize intermittent avalanche dynamics—persists beyond the elastoplastic model studied here, which uses Arrhenius activation without external driving and a random-orientation Eshelby stress propagator.

Background

The paper analyzes thermal avalanche dynamics in an elastoplastic model of amorphous solids with Arrhenius activation and no external driving, finding a system-size-dependent critical temperature Tc(L) that separates intermittent avalanches from thermally assisted flow. Above Tc(L), avalanches become self-sustained and system-spanning; below Tc(L), avalanche statistics are scale-free with exponential cutoffs.

A key result is that Tc(L) decreases algebraically with L, suggesting that in sufficiently large systems arbitrarily small but finite temperatures might destabilize the intermittent regime. The authors note that this scenario is derived within their specific modeling framework and approximations, and explicitly state that it remains unknown whether this extrapolation holds in more general settings.