Related papers: Nonlinear modes disentangle glassy and Goldstone m…
The theoretical understanding of the low-frequency modes in amorphous solids at finite temperature is still incomplete. The study of the relevant modes is obscured by the dressing of inter-particle forces by collision-induced momentum…
The glassy dynamics of dense active matter have recently become a topic of interest due to their importance in biological processes such as wound healing and tissue development. However, while the liquid-state properties of dense active…
The transition of a fluid to a rigid glass upon cooling is a common route of transformation from liquid to solid that embodies the most poorly understood features of both phases1,2,3. From the liquid perspective, the puzzle is to understand…
Understanding the vibrational and thermal properties of amorphous solids is one of the most discussed and long-standing issues in condensed matter physics. Recent works have made significant steps towards understanding harmonic vibrational…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
We summarize the salient features of our theory of non-phononic vibrational excitations in glasses [W. Schirmacher et al., Nature Comm. 15, 3107 (2024)]. Next, we provide further evidence of the non-universality of the $\omega^4$ scaling of…
Low-frequency vibrational modes play a central role in determining various basic properties of glasses, yet their statistical and mechanical properties are not fully understood. Using extensive numerical simulations of several model glasses…
Glasses feature a broad distribution of relaxation times and activation energies without an obvious characteristic scale. At the same time, macroscopic quantities such as Newtonian viscosity and nonlinear plastic deformation, are…
A system is glassy when the observation time is much smaller than the equilibration time. A unifying thermodynamic picture of the glassy state is presented. Slow configurational modes are in quasi-equilibrium at an effective temperature. It…
The work of this thesis concerns the problem of linear low energy excitations of vector spin glass models. An analytical and numerical study is carried out, considering a fully connected random-field Heisenberg model at zero temperature, a…
Tackling the low-temperature fate of supercooled liquids is challenging due to the immense timescales involved, which prevent equilibration and lead to the operational glass transition. Relating glassy behaviour to an underlying,…
We propose a framework within which a robust mechanical definition of precursors to plastic instabilities, often termed `soft-spots', naturally emerges. They are shown to be collective displacements (modes) $\hat{z}_0$ that correspond to…
Besides the dynamical slowing down signaled by an enormous increase of the viscosity approaching the glass transition, structural glasses show interesting anomalous thermodynamic features at low temperatures that hint at peculiar deviations…
Using molecular simulations and theory, we develop an explicit mapping of the contribution of molecular relaxation modes in glassy thermosets to the shear modulus, where the relaxations were tuned by altering the polarity of side groups.…
We study the vibrational spectra and the specific heat of disordered systems using an effective hydrodynamic framework. We consider the contribution of diffusive modes, i.e. the 'diffusons', to the density of states and the specific heat.…
We investigate the response of a system of hard spheres to two classes of perturbations over a range of densities spanning the fluid, crystalline, and glassy regimes within a molecular dynamics framework. Firstly, we consider the relaxation…
Measuring, characterizing and modelling the slow dynamics of glassy soft matter is a great challenge, with an impact that ranges from industrial applications to fundamental issues in modern statistical physics, such as the glass transition…
Generalizing the mode-coupling theory for ideal liquid-glass transitions, equations of motion are derived for the correlation functions describing the glassy dynamics of a diatomic probe molecule immersed in a simple glass-forming system.…
Tunnelling Two-Level Systems (TLS) dominate the physics of glasses at low temperatures. Yet TLS are extremely rare and it is extremely difficult to directly observe them $\it{in \, silico}$. It is thus crucial to develop simple structural…
In these lectures I will present an introduction to the modern way of studying the properties of glassy systems. I will start from soluble models of increasing complications, the Random Energy Model, the $p$-spins interacting model and I…