The Polycluster Theory for the Structure of Glasses: Evidence from Low Temperature Physics
Abstract
The problems of the intermediate-range atomic structure of glasses and of the mechanism for the glass transition are approached from the low-temperature end in terms of a scenario for the atomic organization that justifies the use of an extended tunneling model. The latter is crucial for the explanation of the magnetic and compositional effects discovered in non-metallic glasses in the Kelvin and milli-Kelvin temperature range. The model relies on the existence of multi-welled local potentials for the effective tunneling particles that are a manifestation of a non-homogeneous atomic structure deriving from the established dynamical heterogeneities that characterize the supercooled liquid state. It is shown that the extended tunneling model can successfully explain a range of experiments at low temperatures, but the proposed non-homogeneous atomic structure scenario is then tested in the light of available high resolution electron microscopy imaging of the structure of some glasses and on the behaviour near the transition.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1703.00248,
title = {The Polycluster Theory for the Structure of Glasses: Evidence from Low Temperature Physics},
author = {Giancarlo Jug},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.00248},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
29 pages, 18 (some multiple) figures; contributed chapter (peer-reviewed) to Springer book: L. Bulavin and A.Chalyi (eds.), Modern Problems of Molecular Physics: Selected Reviews, Springer Proceedings in Physics xxx, DOI xx.xxxx/xxx-x-xxx-xxxxx-x x, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 2017. Revised version. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1508.02424