Related papers: Theory of the Structural Glass Transition: A Pedag…
We analyze the ways in which the random first order phase transition (RFOT) of the glass transition differs from the well-studied regular first order and second order (or continuous) phase transitions. Just as is the case in the latter two…
The routine transformation of a liquid, as it is cooled rapidly, resulting in glass formation, is remarkably complex. A theoretical explanation of the dynamics associated with this process has remained one of the major unsolved problems in…
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…
The steep increase of the relaxation time of glass forming liquids upon cooling is traditionally ascribed to an impending entropy crisis: since the system has "nowhere to go", dynamics must come to a halt. This classic argument, due to Adam…
The Random First Order Transition (RFOT) theory of glasses provides a unified framework for explaining the observed correlations of the kinetic and thermodynamic behaviors of glass-forming liquids having a wide variety of chemical…
A unified treatment of structural relaxation in a deeply supercooled glassy liquid is developed which extends the existing mode coupling theory (MCT) by incorporating the effects of activated events by using the concepts from the random…
Extensive computer simulations are performed for a few model glass-forming liquids in both two and three dimensions to study their dynamics when a randomly chosen fraction of particles are frozen in their equilibrium positions. For all the…
We use Brownian dynamics simulations of a binary mixture of highly charged spherical colloidal particles to illustrate many of the implications of the Random First Order Transition (RFOT) theory (PRA 40 1045 (1989)), which is the only…
While the transformation of flowing liquids into rigid glasses is omnipresent, a complete understanding of vitrification remains elusive. Of the numerous approaches aimed at solving the glass transition problem, the Random First-Order…
At the mean-field level, on fully connected lattices, several disordered spin models have been shown to belong to the universality class of "structural glasses", with a "random first-order transition" (RFOT) characterized by a discontinuous…
Colloidal particles, which are ubiquitous, have become ideal testing grounds for the structural glass transition (SGT) theories. In these systems glassy behavior is manifested as the density of the particles is increased. Thus, soft…
We describe our perspective on the Structural Glass Transition (SGT) problem built on the premise that a viable theory must provide a consistent picture of the dynamics and statics, which are manifested by large increase in shear viscosity…
The dramatic slowdown of glass-forming liquids has been variously linked to increasing dynamic and static correlation lengths. Yet, empirical evidence is insufficient to decide among competing theories. The random first order theory (RFOT)…
The aim of this paper is to summarise the basic arguments and the intuition bolstering the RFOT picture for glasses, based on a finite dimensional extension of mean-field models with an exponentially large number of metastable states. We…
The Random First Order Transition (RFOT) theory started with the pioneering work of Kirkpatrick, Thirumalai and Wolynes. It leverages the methods and advances of the theory of disordered systems. It fares remarkably well at reproducing the…
Despite decades of research, it remains to be established whether the transformation of a liquid into a glass is fundamentally thermodynamic or dynamic in origin. While observations of growing length scales are consistent with thermodynamic…
According to the Random First Order Transition (RFOT) theory of glasses, the barriers for activated dynamics in supercooled liquids vanish as the temperature of a viscous liquid approaches the dynamical transition temperature from below.…
How does nonequilibrium activity modify the approach to a glass? This is an important question, since many experiments reveal the near-glassy nature of the cell interior, remodelled by activity. However, different simulations of dense…
Dynamics near the surface of glasses is generally much faster than in the bulk. Neglecting static perturbations of structure at the surface, we use random first order transition theory to show the free energy barrier for activated motion…
Although several theories relate the steep slowdown of glass formers to increasing spatial correlations of some sort, standard static correlation functions show no evidence for this. We present results that reveal for the first time a…