Related papers: Nature of excitations and defects in structural gl…

The physics of glasses can be studied from many viewpoints, from material scientists interested in the development of new materials to statistical physicists inventing new theoretical tools to deal with disordered systems. In these lectures…

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…

The approach of nonequilibrium evolution thermodynamics earlier offered is developed. It helps to describe the processes of defect formation within the adiabatic approximation. The basic equations system depends on the initial defects…

We describe a model for the thermodynamics and dynamics of glass-forming liquids in terms of excitations from an ideal glass state to a Gaussian manifold of configurationally excited states. The quantitative fit of this three parameter…

Mechanical properties are of central importance to materials sciences, in particular if they depend on external stimuli. Here we investigate the rheological response of amorphous solids, namely col- loidal glasses, to external forces. Using…

Despite the enormous theoretical and application interests, a fundamental understanding of the glassy dynamics remains elusive. The static properties of glassy and ordinary liquids are similar, but their dynamics are dramatically different.…

Amorphous solids exhibit intrinsic, local structural transitions, that give rise to the well known quantum-mechanical two-level systems at low temperatures. We explain the microscopic origin of the electric dipole moment of these two-level…

The dramatic slowdown of dynamics in supercooled liquids approaching the glass transition remains one of the central unresolved problems in condensed matter physics. We review approaches that attribute this slowdown to growing thermodynamic…

An equilibrated model glass-forming liquid is studied by mapping successive configurations produced by molecular dynamics simulation onto a time series of inherent structures (local minima in the potential energy). Using this ``inherent…

At temperatures well below their glass transition, the deformation properties of bulk metallic glasses are characterised by a sharp transition from elasticity to plasticity, a reproducible yield stress, and an approximately linear decrease…

Understanding the statistical mechanics of low-energy excitations in structural glasses has been the focus of extensive research efforts in the past decades due to their key roles in determining the low-temperature mechanical and transport…

Elastic models of the glass transition relate the relaxation dynamics and the elastic properties of structural glasses. They are based on the assumption that the relaxation dynamics occurs through activated events in the energy landscape…

Amorphous solids lack long-range order. Therefore identifying structural defects -- akin to dislocations in crystalline solids -- that carry plastic flow in these systems remains a daunting challenge. By comparing many different structural…

We investigate the formation of polycrystalline structures in a class of particle systems. The atomistic energy is modeled as a sum of particle energies that favor atoms being locally isometric to a reference lattice. The discrete frame…

We conduct a numerical study of the dynamical behavior of a system of three-dimensional crosses, particles that consist of three mutually perpendicular line segments rigidly joined at their midpoints. In an earlier study [W. van Ketel et…

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 propose a dynamical theory of low-temperature shear deformation in amorphous solids. Our analysis is based on molecular-dynamics simulations of a two-dimensional, two-component noncrystalline system. These numerical simulations reveal…

We study the equilibrium statistical properties of the potential energy landscape of several glass models in a temperature regime so far inaccessible to computer simulations. We show that unstable modes of the stationary points undergo a…

Jamming crossovers occur at zero temperature in assemblies of particles interacting via finite range repulsive potentials, when on increasing the density particles make contacts with those of subsequent coordination shells. Density…

The influence of repeated thermal cycling on mechanical properties, structural relaxation, and evolution of the potential energy in binary glasses is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider a binary mixture with…