Activated dynamics and effective temperature in a steady state sheared glass

We conduct nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to measure the shear stress sigma, the average inherent structure energy < E-IS >, and the effective temperature T-eff of a sheared model glass as a function of bath temperature T and shear strain rate gamma. For T above the glass transition temperature T-0, the rheology approaches a Newtonian limit and T-eff -> T as gamma -> 0, while for T < T-0, sigma approaches a yield stress and T-eff approaches a limiting value near T-0. In the shear-dominated regime at high T, high gamma or at low T, we find that sigma and < E-IS > each collapse onto a single curve as a function of T-eff. This indicates that T-eff is controlling behavior in this regime.