GLASSY MOTION OF ELASTIC MANIFOLDS

We discuss the low-temperature dynamics of an elastic manifold driven through a random medium. For driving forces well below the T = 0 depin ning force, the medium advances via thermally activated hops over the energy barriers separating favorable metastable states. We show that t he distribution of waiting times for these hopping processes scales as a power law. This power-law distribution naturally yields a nonlinear glassy response for the driven medium, v similar to exp(-const x F--m u).