Elasticity of a contact-line and avalanche-size distribution at
depinning
Pierre Le Doussal, Kay Jörg Wiese
CNRS-Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de
l'Ecole Normale Supérieure,
24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France.
Abstract
Motivated by recent experiments, we extend the Joanny-deGennes calculation of the elasticity
of a contact line to an arbitrary contact angle and an arbitrary plate inclination in presence of gravity.
This requires a diagonalization of the elastic modes around the non-linear equilibrium profile, which is
carried out exactly. We then make detailed predictions for the avalanche-size distribution at quasi-static
depinning: we study how the universal (i.e. short-scale independent) rescaled size distribution and the ratio
of moments of local to global avalanches depend on the precise form of the elastic kernel.
arXiv:0908.4001 [pdf]
Phys. Rev. E 82 (2010) 011108 [pdf]
Copyright (C) by Kay Wiese. Last edited August 27, 2009.