Related papers: Can the glass transition be explained without a gr…
We investigate the spatial overlap of successive spin configurations in Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations using the local Metropolis algorithm and the Swendsen-Wang and Wolff cluster algorithms. We examine the dynamics of these…
The existence of a static lengthscale that grows in accordance with the dramatic slowing down observed at the glass transition is a subject of intense interest. A recent publication compared two proposals for this length scale, one based on…
Glass-like materials are nonequilibrium systems where the relaxation time may exceed reasonable time scales of observations. In the present paper a dynamic percolation model is introduced in order to explain the principal properties of…
We propose that an onset of glass transition can be defined as the point at which a supercooled liquid acquires the stress relaxation mechanism of a solid glass. We translate this condition into the rate equation for local relaxation…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…
It is widely believed that the emergence of slow glassy dynamics is encoded in a material's microstructure. First-principles theory [mode-coupling theory (MCT)] is able to predict the dramatic slowdown of the dynamics from only static…
The overlap, or similarity, between liquid configurations is at the core of the mean-field description of the glass transition, and remains a useful concept when studying three-dimensional glass-forming liquids. In liquids, however, the…
Mean-field theories of the glass transition predict a phase transition to a dynamically arrested state, yet no such transition is observed in experiments or simulations of finite-dimensional systems. We resolve this long-standing…
We extend our earlier shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of amorphous plasticity to include the effects of thermally assisted molecular rearrangements. This version of our theory is a substantial revision and generalization of…
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…
Ultrastable vapor-deposited glasses display uncommon material properties. Most remarkably, upon heating they are believed to melt via a liquid front that originates at the free surface and propagates over a mesoscopic crossover length,…
Supercooled liquids exhibit spatial heterogeneity in the dynamics of their fluctuating atomic arrangements. The length and time scales of the heterogeneous dynamics are central to the glass transition and influence nucleation and growth of…
By combining aspects of the coherent and self intermediate scattering functions, measured by dynamical light scattering on a suspension of hard sphere-like particles, we show that the arrest of particle number density fluctuations spreads…
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…
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…
We develop a new extended version of the mode-coupling theory (MCT) for glass transition, which incorporates activated hopping processes via the dynamical theory originally formulated to describe diffusion-jump processes in crystals. The…
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…
In these notes we introduce briefly the fundamentals of the replica method in the context of liquid theory and the structural glass problem. In particular, we explain and show its usefulness as a computation framework in the context of the…
We develop a real space renormalisation group analysis of disordered models of glasses, in particular of the spin models at the origin of the Random First Order Transition theory. We find three fixed points respectively associated to the…
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…