Evolution of displacements and strains in sheared amorphous solids

The local deformation of two-dimensional Lennard-Jones glasses under imposed shear strain is studied via computer simulations. Both the mean squared displacement and mean squared strain rise linearly with the length of the strain interval Delta gamma over which they are measured. However, the increase in displacement does not represent single-particle diffusion. There are long-range spatial correlations in displacement associated with slip lines with an amplitude of order the particle size. Strong dependence on system size is also observed. The probability distributions of displacement and strain are very different. For small Delta gamma the distribution of displacement has a plateau followed by an exponential tail. The distribution becomes Gaussian as Delta gamma increases to about 0.03. The strain distributions consist of sharp central peaks associated with elastic regions, and long exponential tails associated with plastic regions. The latter persist to the largest Delta gamma studied.