Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Optimal paths play a fundamental role in numerous physical applications ranging from random polymers to brittle fracture, from the flow through porous media to information propagation. Here for the first time we explore the path that is activated once this optimal path fails and what happens when this new path also fails and so on, until the system is completely disconnected. In fact many applications can also be found for this novel fracture problem. In the limit of strong disorder, our results show that all the cracks are located on a single self-similar connected line of fractal dimension D(b) approximately = 1.22. For weak disorder, the number of cracks spreads all over the entire network before global connectivity is lost. Strikingly, the disconnecting path (backbone) is, however, completely independent on the disorder.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2054913256