Related papers: Atomistic structural mechanism for the glass trans…
Glass transition where viscosity of liquids increases dramatically upon decrease of temperature without any major change in structural properties, remains one of the most challenging problems in condensed matter physics (Cavagna, 2009;…
A molecular theory of the glass transition of network forming liquids is developed using a combination of self-consistent phonon and liquid state approaches. Both the dynamical transition and the entropy crisis characteristic of random…
The starting point of the present work is the observation of possible analogies, both at the phenomenological and at the methodological level, between the subcritical transition to turbulence and the glass transition. Having recalled the…
Thermodynamics and kinetics are thought to be linked in glass transitions. The quantitative predictions of -relaxation activation barriers provided by the theory of glasses based on random first order transitions are compared with…
We propose that glass-forming liquids are intrinsically under the influences of both fluctuating interactions and random fields well-known in the field of spin systems. This is due to the frustration between the isotropic and anisotropic…
We consider the problem of slow activation dynamics in glassy systems undergoing a random first order phase transition. Using an effective potential approach to supercooled liquids, we determine the spectrum of activation barriers for…
It was recently discovered that SWAP, a Monte Carlo algorithm that involves the exchange of pairs of particles of differing diameters, can dramatically accelerate the equilibration of simulated supercooled liquids in regimes where the…
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…
We discuss a Statistical Mechanics approach in the manner of Edwards to the ``inherent states'' (defined as the stable configurations in the potential energy landscape) of glassy systems and granular materials. We show that at stationarity…
The problems of the intermediate-range atomic structure of glasses and of the mechanism for the glass transition are approached from the low-temperature end in terms of a scenario for the atomic organization that justifies the use of an…
We extend our statistical mechanical theory of the glass transition from examples consisting of point particles to molecular liquids with internal degrees of freedom. As before, the fundamental assertion is that super-cooled liquids are…
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,…
The metastable states of a glass are counted by adding a weak pinning field which explicitly breaks the ergodicity. Their entropy, that is the logarithm of their number, is extensive in a range of temperatures $T_G < T < T_C$ only, where…
Amorphous solids, or glasses, are distinguished from crystalline solids by their lack of long-range structural order. At the level of two-body structural correlations, glassformers show no qualitative change upon vitrifying from a…
Recent ideas based on the properties of assemblies of frictionless particles in mechanical equilibrium provide a perspective of amorphous systems different from that offered by the traditional approach originating in liquid theory. The…
We provide a theoretical perspective on the glass transition in molecular liquids at thermal equilibrium, on the spatially heterogeneous and aging dynamics of disordered materials, and on the rheology of soft glassy materials. We start with…
The excitation-chain theory of the glass transition, proposed in an earlier publication, predicts diverging, super-Arrhenius relaxation times and, {\it via} a similarly diverging length scale, suggests a way of understanding the relations…
The glass transition is considered as a phase transition in the system of topologically protected excitations in matter structure. The critical behavior of the system is considered both in statics and dynamics cases. It is shown in the…
The Adam-Gibbs (AG) relation connects the dynamics of a glass-forming liquid to its the thermodynamics via. the configurational entropy, and is of fundamental importance in descriptions of glassy behaviour. The breakdown of the…
We review the field of the glass transition, glassy dynamics and aging from a statistical mechanics perspective. We give a brief introduction to the subject and explain the main phenomenology encountered in glassy systems, with a particular…