Title: Driven dynamics in random media: domain walls and vortex lattices 

Abstract:
The out of equilibrium driven dynamics of elastic manifolds or interacting particle systems  in random media is characterized by the ocurrence of different flow regimes or dynamical phases as a function of the drive. To understand such regimes, it is crucial to know, roughly speaking, whether the flow in each regime is strictly “elastic” or “plastic”. The first corresponds to the case of a transported object that has such an integrity that its topological order is maintained. A paradigmatic example of such “elastic flow” are uniformly driven magnetic domain walls in weakly disordered thin film ferromagnets, whose universal emergent dynamical behavior can be described by minimal models of interfaces in random media, and tackled by powerful analytical and numerical techniques. On the other hand, systems such as vortex lattices in superconductors were shown to clearly display “plastic flow regimes”, much more difficult to describe than their elastic counterpart. Although both systems display a depinning transition from a static to a moving phase, the fate of the universality found for purely elastic systems in systems that can tear during its motion is, to my view, an important open question. In this talk I will describe theoretical and experimental results for both systems, and bring to discussion the similarities and differences of their depinning transitions with the analogous yielding phenomenon of driven amorphous materials.