The plastic deformation of crystalline materials can be understood by considering their structural defects such as disclinations and dislocations. Although glasses are also solids, their structure resembles closely the one of a liquid and hence the concept of structural defects becomes ill-defined. As a consequence it is very challenging to rationalize on a microscopic level the mechanical properties of glasses close to the yielding point and to relate plastic events with structural properties. Here we investigate the topological characteristics of the eigenvector field of the vibrational excitations of a two-dimensional glass model, notably the geometric arrangement of the topological defects as a function of vibrational frequency. We find that if the system is subjected to a quasistatic shear, the location of the resulting plastic events correlate strongly with the topological defects that have a negative charge. Our results provide thus a direct link between the structure of glasses prior their deformation and the plastic events during deformation.

中文翻译：

---

振动模式的拓扑预测玻璃中的塑性事件

晶体材料的塑性变形可以通过考虑其结构缺陷（如向错和位错）来理解。虽然玻璃也是固体，但它们的结构非常类似于液体，因此结构缺陷的概念变得不明确。因此，在微观水平上合理化玻璃接近屈服点的机械性能并将塑性事件与结构性能联系起来是非常具有挑战性的。在这里，我们研究了二维玻璃模型的振动激发的特征向量场的拓扑特征，特别是作为振动频率函数的拓扑缺陷的几何排列。我们发现，如果系统受到准静态剪切，由此产生的塑性事件的位置与具有负电荷的拓扑缺陷密切相关。因此，我们的结果提供了玻璃变形前的结构与变形过程中的塑性事件之间的直接联系。