Related papers: Point-to-set lengths, local structure, and glassin…
This perspective article reviews arguments that glass-forming liquids are different from those of standard liquid-state theory, which typically have a viscosity in the mPa$\cdot$s range and relaxation times of order picoseconds. These…
The viscosity of glass-forming liquids increases by many orders of magnitude if their temperature is lowered by a mere factor of 2-3 [1,2]. Recent studies suggest that this widespread phenomenon is accompanied by spatially heterogeneous…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
The glass transition GT is usually thought of as a structural arrest that occurs during the cooling of a liquid, or sometimes a plastic crystal, trapping a metastable state of the system before it can recrystallize to stabler forms1. This…
Dynamical four-point susceptibilities measure the extent of spatial correlations in the dynamics of glass forming systems. We show how these susceptibilities depend on the length scales that necessarily form part of their definition. The…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…
Despite the use of glasses for thousands of years, the nature of the glass transition is still mysterious. On approaching the glass transition, the growth of dynamic heterogeneity has long been thought to play a key role in explaining the…
In a recent letter, Kawasaki et al. (PRL 99, 215701 (2007)) study glass formation in a 2-dimensional (2D) model of polydisperse repulsive disks. They give numerical evidence for a direct relation between slowing down of the relaxation,…
Glass formation is one of the most interesting phenomena in the condensed matter field. Considerable effort has gone into understanding and predicting the glass formability. However, the previous prediction requires the glass first made…
Dynamic heterogeneity is now recognised as a central aspect of structural relaxation in disordered materials with slow dynamics, and was the focus of intense research in the last decade. Here we describe how initial, indirect observations…
We assess the validity of "microscopic" approaches of glass-forming liquids based on the sole k nowledge of the static pair density correlations. To do so we apply them to a benchmark provided by two liquid models that share very similar…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
There is a growing evidence that relaxation in glassy materials, both spontaneous and externally driven, is mediated by localized soft spots. Recent progress made it possible to identify the soft spots inside glassy structures and to…
Understanding the mechanical properties of glasses remains elusive since the glass transition itself is not fully understood, even in well studied examples of glass formers in two dimensions. In this context we demonstrate here: (i) a…
The glass transition remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of contemporary condensed matter physics. When crystallization is bypassed by rapid cooling, a supercooled liquid, retaining amorphous particle arrangment, results. The…
Understanding and controlling physical aging, i.e. the spontaneous temporal evolution of out-of-equilibrium systems, represents one of the greatest tasks in material science. Recent studies have revealed the existence of a complex atomic…
We investigate structural and dynamical properties of moderately polydisperse emulsions across an extended range of droplet volume fractions phgr, encompassing fluid and glassy states up to jamming. Combining experiments and simulations, we…
A definition of structural diversity, adapted from the biodiversity literature, is introduced to provide a general characterization of structures of condensed matter. Using the Favored Local Structure (FLS) lattice model as a testbed, the…
Using extensive molecular dynamics simulations of an equilibrium, glass-forming Lennard-Jones mixture, we characterize in detail the local atomic motions. We show that spatial correlations exist among particles undergoing extremely large…
Static granular packings are model hard-sphere glass formers. The nature of glass transition has remained a hotly debated issue. We review recent experimental progresses in using granular materials to study glass transitions. We focus on…