Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 26: Brownian Motion, Transport and Anomalous Diffusion

DY 26.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 10:00–10:15, HÜL 186

Topological solitons driven through grain boundaries — •Xin Cao¹, Emanuele Panizon^1,2, and Clemens Bechinger¹ — ¹Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany — ²International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy

Topological solitons, or kinks, widely exists in materials and at interfaces. They play important roles in the elastic deformation of metals and alloys and in the mobility of nano contacts. Here, by driving such solitons through grain boundaries in colloidal crystals, we study the influence of such boundaries to the dynamics of solitons. We show that when small solitons are travelling through the grain boundaries, their motion is delayed at the grain boundary with the delay time depending on the driving force. In contrast large extended solitons are splitted upon approaching grain boundaries. Afterwards they split into several smaller solitons due to variations in the delay times at different regions of the grain boundary. At small driving forces, solitons are not able to cross grain boundaries which leads to their accumulation (pile up) at these locations. In addition to the time delay, splitting and pile up of solitons, we also found that the grain boundary can reflect incoming solitons when driving forces are parallel to the grain boundary. Such reflections strongly depend on the mismatch of lattice orientations at the grain boundary and can be used for the controlled guiding of solitons.