Related papers: Perspective: The Glass Transition
In this work, we study the nature of transitions between inherent structures of a two-dimensional model supercooled liquid. We demonstrate that these transitions occur predominately along a small number of directions on the energy…
In these lectures I will review some theoretical results that have been obtained for spin glasses. I will concentrate my attention on the formulation of the mean field approach and on its numerical and experimental verifications. I will…
Potts glasses are prototype models that have been used to understand the structural glass transition. However, in finite space dimensions a glass transition remains to be detected in the 10-state Potts glass. Using a one-dimensional model…
Over the last decade computer simulations have had an increasing role in shedding light on difficult statistical physical phenomena and in particular on the ubiquitous problem of the glass transition. Here in a wide variety of materials the…
In the framework of schematic hard spheres lattice models for granular media we investigate the phenomenon of the ``jamming transition''. In particular, using Edwards' approach, by analytical calculations at a mean field level, we derive…
Glass-to-glass and liquid-to-liquid phase transitions were observed many years ago in bulk and confined water with or without applied pressure. It is shown that they result from the competition of two-liquid phases separated by an enthalpy…
The high cooling rate needed for preparing the metallic glass (MG) makes the nonequilibrium nature of glass formation more prominent and requires a better quenching technique than ever before. Here, we formulate the cooling process in an…
In these lectures I will review the approach to glasses based on the replica formalism. Many of the physical ideas are very similar to those of older approaches. The replica approach has the advantage of describing in an unified setting…
We highlight certain key achievements in experimental work on molecular, colloidal and granular glassformers. This short review considers these three classes of experimental systems and focusses largely on the work of the authors and their…
We discuss some generic features of the dynamics of glass-forming liquids close to the glass transition singularity of the idealized mode-coupling theory (MCT). The analysis is based on a recent model by one of the authors for the…
Melt supercooling leads to glass formation. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions are observed depending on thermal paths. Viscosity, density and surface tension thermal dependences measured at heating and subsequent cooling show hysteresis…
Glass, a ubiquitous state of matter like a frozen liquid, is a seminal issue across fundamental and applied sciences and has long been investigated in the framework of classical mechanics. A challenge in glass physics is the exploration of…
This paper is an introduction to some of the main present issues in the theory of structural glasses. After recalling a few experimental facts, it gives a short account of the analogy between fragile glasses and the mean field discontinuous…
This is a short review on the compatibility between (a) mean-field, mode-coupling theories of the glass transition, where potential energy landscape ideas are natural, and (b) the necessity of describing the slowing down of glassy materials…
We review the Random First Order Transition Theory of the glass transition, emphasizing the experimental tests of the theory. Many distinct phenomena are quantitatively predicted or explained by the theory, both above and below the glass…
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
Using the mapping of the Fokker-Planck description of classical stochastic dynamics onto a quantum Hamiltonian, we argue that a dynamical glass transition in the former must have a precise definition in terms of a quantum phase transition…
We investigate the liquid-glass phase transition in a system of point-like particles interacting via a finite-range attractive potential in D-dimensional space. The phase transition is driven by an `entropy crisis' where the available phase…
Glass-forming liquids have been extensively studied in recent decades, but there is still no theory that fully describes these systems, and the diversity of treatments is in itself a barrier to understanding. Here we introduce a new simple…
This paper gives an introduction to some of the statistical physics problems which appear in the study of structural glasses. It is a shortened and updated version of a more detailed review paper which has appeared in cond-mat/0005173.