Related papers: Cluster structure and dynamics in gels and glasses
Bacterial assemblies exhibit rich collective behaviors that control their biological functions, making them a relevant object of study from an active matter physics perspective. Dense bacterial suspensions self-organize into distinct…
We investigate the characteristic length scales associated with the glass transition phenomenon. By studying an atomic glass-forming liquid in negatively curved space, for which the local order is well identified and the amount of…
We review the phenomena of dynamical heterogeneity in glass-forming systems and its description within replica and mean-field theories of the glass transition.
When a liquid freezes, a change in the local atomic structure marks the transition to the crystal. When a liquid is cooled to form a glass, however, no noticeable structural change marks the glass transition. Indeed, characteristic features…
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…
Glass-forming liquids grow dramatically sluggish upon cooling. This slowdown has long been thought to be accompanied by a growing correlation length. Characteristic dynamical and static length scales, however, have been observed to grow at…
We investigate dynamical heterogeneities in the collective relaxation of a concentrated microgel system, for which the packing fraction can be conveniently varied by changing the temperature. The packing fraction dependent mechanical…
The glass transition, extensively studied in dense fluids, polymers, or colloids, corresponds to a dramatic evolution of equilibrium transport coefficients upon a modest change of control parameter, like temperature or pressure. A similar…
The dynamics of structural relaxation in a model polymer glass subject to spatially-homogeneous, time-periodic shear deformation is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We study a coarse-grained bead-spring model of short…
We analyze a simple dynamical model of glasses, based on the idea that each particle is trapped in a local potential well, which itself evolves due to hopping of neighbouring particles. The glass transition is signalled by the fact that the…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
We present experimental confirmation of dynamic facilitation in monodisperse and bidisperse colloidal suspensions near the glass transition volume fraction. Correlations in particle dynamics are seen to exist not only in space (clusters and…
We use computer simulations to study the relaxation dynamics of a model for oil-in-water microemulsion droplets linked with telechelic polymers. This system exhibits both gel and glass phases and we show that the competition between these…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation of a supercooled simple monatomic glass-forming liquid. It is found that the onset of the supercooled regime results in formation of distinct domains of slow diffusion which are confined to the…
We use molecular dynamics simulations of a simple model to show that dispersions of slightly elongated colloidal particles with long-range dipolar interactions, like ferrofluids, can form a physical (reversible) gel at low volume fractions.…
We analyze static point-to-set correlations in glass-forming liquids. The generic idea is to freeze the position of a set of particles in an equilibrium configuration and to perform sampling in the presence of this additional constraint.…
Few questions in condensed matter science have proven as difficult to unravel as the interplay between structure and dynamics in supercooled liquids and glasses. The conundrum: close to the glass transition, the dynamics slow down…
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be considered…
Glass transition is accompanied by a rapid growth of the structural relaxation time and a concomitant decrease of configurational entropy. It remains unclear whether the transition has a thermodynamic origin, and whether the dynamic arrest…
We study the relaxation process in a simple glass-former - the KA lattice gas model. We show that, for this model, structural relaxation is due to slow percolation of regions of co-operatively moving particles, which leads to heterogeneous…