Related papers: Low-energy quasilocalized excitations in structura…
Glasses and other non-crystalline solids exhibit thermal and acoustic properties at low temperatures anomalously different from those found in crystalline solids, and with a remarkable degree of universality. Below a few K, these universal…
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…
In active microrheology the mechanical properties of a material are tested by adding probe particles which are pulled by an external force. In case of supercooled liquids, strong forcing leads to a thinning of the host material which…
The dynamic structure factor of glassy and liquid glycerol has been measured by inelastic X-ray scattering in the exchanged momentum ($Q$) region $Q$=2$\div$23 nm$^{-1}$ and in the temperature range 80$\div$570 K. Beside the propagating…
We propose a microscopic model without energy barriers in order to explain some generic features observed in structural glasses. The statics can be exactly solved while the dynamics has been clarified using Monte Carlo calculations.…
A broad fundamental understanding of the mechanisms underlying the phenomenology of supercooled liquids has remained elusive, despite decades of intense exploration. When supercooled beneath its characteristic melting temperature, a liquid…
The low-temperature quasi-universal behavior of amorphous solids has been attributed to the existence of spatially-localized tunneling defects found in the low-energy regions of the potential energy landscape. Computational models of…
Energy landscapes are high-dimensional surfaces representing the dependence of system energy on variable configurations, which determine crucially the system's emergent behavior but are difficult to be analyzed due to their high-dimensional…
Pointlike objects cause many of the divergences that afflict physical theories. For instance, the gravitational binding energy of a point particle in Newtonian mechanics is infinite. In general relativity, the analog of a point particle is…
The specific heat of liquid helium confined under pressure in nanoporous material and the formation, in these conditions, of a glass phase accompanied by latent heat are known. These properties are in good agreement with a recent model…
Anomalous temperature dependence of heat capacity of glassy systems during a cooling-heating cycle has remained an ill-understood problem for a long time. Most of the features observed in the experimental measurement of the heat capacity of…
Despite their technological relevance, a full microscopic understanding of glasses is still lacking. This applies even more to their surfaces whose properties largely differ from that of the bulk material. Here, we experimentally…
A theoretical treatment of deeply supercooled liquids is difficult because their properties emerge from spatial inhomogeneities that are self-induced, transient, and nanoscopic. I use computer simulations to analyse self-induced static and…
The dynamical glass transition is typically taken to be the temperature at which a glassy liquid is no longer able to equilibrate on experimental timescales. Consequently, the physical properties of these systems just above or below the…
Using positional data from video-microscopy of a two-dimensional colloidal system and from simulations of hard discs we determine the wave-vector-dependent normal mode spring constants in the supercooled fluid and glassy state,…
The random first order transition theory of the dynamics of supercooled liquids is extended to treat aging phenomena in nonequilibrium structural glasses. A reformulation of the idea of ``entropic droplets'' in terms of libraries of local…
The rapid structural and vibrational entropy decrease with decreasing temperature in undercooled liquids is explained in terms of the disappearance of local structural instabilities, which freeze in at the glass temperature as boson peak…
Low-temperature properties of crystalline solids can be understood using harmonic perturbations around a perfect lattice, as in Debye's theory. Low-temperature properties of amorphous solids, however, strongly depart from such descriptions,…
The ab initio theory of electronic excitations in atomically thin [quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D)] crystals presents extra challenges in comparison to both the bulk and purely 2D cases. We argue that the conventionally used energy-loss…
We discuss some recent results connected with the properties of temperature states of quantum disordered systems. This analysis falls within the natural framework of operator algebras. Among the results quoted here, we recall some ergodic…