Universal avalanche dynamics: From nano-crystals, to bulk metallic glasses, to earthquakes and stars?

Slowly-compressed nano-crystals, bulk metallic glasses, rocks, granular materials, and the earth all deform via intermittent slips or “quakes”. We find that although these systems span 12 decades in length scale, they all show the same scaling behavior for their slip size distributions and other statistical properties. Remarkably, they also appear to show similar slip dynamics. A simple mean field model for avalanches of slipping weak spots explains the agreement across scales. It predicts the observed slip-size distributions, and the temporal slip profiles. The analysis draws on tools from statistical physics and the renormalization group. The results enable extrapolations from one scale to another, and from one force to another, across different materials and structures, from nanocrystals to earthquakes. Connections to neuron avalanches in the brain and recent observations on stars will also be discussed, extending the range of scales to 16 decades in length.

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