# The Strain Gap in a System of Weakly and Strongly Interacting Two-Level Systems

A. Churkin, I. Gabdank, A. Burin, M. Schechter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

## Abstract

Many disordered lattices exhibit remarkable universality in their low temperature properties, similar to that found in amorphous solids. Recently a two-TLS (two-level system) model was derived based on the microscopic characteristics of disordered lattices. Within the two-TLS model the quantitative universality of phonon attenuation, and the energy scale of $1-3$ K below which universality is observed, are derived as a consequence of the existence of two types of TLSs, differing by their interaction with the phonon field. In this paper we calculate analytically and numerically the densities of states (DOS) of the weakly and strongly interacting TLSs. We find that the DOS of the former can be well described by a Gaussian, whereas the DOS of the latter have a power law correlation gap at low energies, with an intriguing dependence of the power on the short distance cutoff of the interaction. Both behaviors are markedly different from the logarithmic gap exhibited by a single species of interacting TLSs. Our analytical results are verified against extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Our results support the notion that it is the weakly interacting $\tau$-TLSs that dictate the standard low temperature glassy physics. Yet, the power-law DOS we find for the $S$-TLSs enables the prediction of a number of deviations from the universal glassy behavior that can be tested experimentally. Possible relevance of our results to recent experimental findings in hydrogenated amorphous films, and more generally to amorphous systems, is discussed.
Original language English arXiv preprint Published - 2 Jul 2013

## Keywords

• cond-mat.dis-nn
• cond-mat.mes-hall

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