Related papers: A Theory of Localized Excitations in Supercooled L…
Dynamics that are microscopic in space and time, in which particles commit to a position, so-called excitations, are considered the elementary unit of relaxation in the Dynamic Facilitation (DF) theory of the glass transition. Meanwhile,…
Elucidating the nature of the glass transition has been the holy grail of condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics for several decades. A phenomenological aspect that makes glass formation a conceptually formidable problem is that…
For several atomistic models of glass formers, at conditions below their glassy dynamics onset temperatures, ${T_\mathrm{o}}$, we use importance sampling of trajectory space to study the structure, statistics and dynamics of excitations…
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…
In supercooled liquids, dynamical facilitation refers to a phenomenon where microscopic motion begets further motion nearby, resulting in spatially heterogeneous dynamics. This is central to the glassy relaxation dynamics of such liquids,…
Low-energy excitations play a key role in all condensed-matter systems, yet there is limited understanding of their nature in glasses, where they correspond to local rearrangements of groups of particles. Here we introduce an algorithm to…
We study the role of elasticity-induced facilitation on the dynamics of glass-forming liquids by a coarse-grained two-dimensional model in which local relaxation events, taking place by thermal activation, can trigger new relaxations by…
One of the greatest challenges in contemporary condensed matter physics is to ascertain whether the formation of glasses from liquids is fundamentally thermodynamic or dynamic in origin. While the thermodynamic paradigm has dominated…
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…
It is difficult to relate the properties of liquids and glasses directly to their structure because of complexity in the structure which defies precise definition. The potential energy landscape (PEL) approach is a very insightful way to…
The structure, thermodynamics and slow activated dynamics of the equilibrated metastable regime of glass-forming fluids remains a poorly understood problem of high theoretical and experimental interest. We apply a highly accurate…
Key aspects of glasses are controlled by the presence of excitations in which a group of particles can rearrange. Surprisingly, recent observations indicate that their density is dramatically reduced and their size decreases as the…
The structural description for the intriguing link between the fast vibrational dynamics and slow diffusive dynamics in glass-forming systems is one of the most challenging issues in physical science. Here, in a model of metallic…
We present a linearized shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of glassy dynamics in which the internal STZ transition rates are characterized by a broad distribution of activation barriers. For slowly aging or fully aged systems, the main…
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…
The phenomenology of glass-forming liquids is often described in terms of their underlying, high-dimensional potential energy surface. In particular, the statistics of stationary points sampled as a function of temperature provides useful…
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…
Identifying heterogeneous structures in glasses --- such as localized soft spots --- and understanding structure-dynamics relations in these systems remain major scientific challenges. Here we derive an exact expression for the local…
Dynamic facilitation theory assumes short-ranged dynamic constraints to be the essential feature of supercooled liquids and draws much of its conclusions from the study of kinetically constrained models. While deceptively simple, these…
The origin of stretched exponential relaxation in supercooled glass-forming liquids is one of the central questions regarding the anomalous dynamics of these fluids. The dominant explanation for this phenomenon has long been the proposition…