Discontinuous depinning/yielding transition of elastic manifolds with tailored internal elasticity

Abstract

We consider elastic manifolds evolving on disordered energy potentials under the action of anexternal uniform driving. This scenario includes the cases of depinning and yielding, which provideparadigmatic examples of out of equilibrium phase transitions. In both cases, velocity of the manifoldis zero at low driving force, and increases smoothly when a critical driving is exceeded, defining acontinuous flow-curve for these systems. We show that when more general forms of the manifoldelasticity are considered, the flow curve may become reentrant, and the transition hysteretic, ordiscontinuous. This constitutes a novel scenario for a discontinuous transition out of equilibrium.