Related papers: Competition between Barrier- and Entropy-Driven Ac…
The ground state dynamics of an entropy barrier model proposed recently for describing relaxation of glassy systems is considered. At stages of evolution the dynamics can be described by a simple variant of the Ehrenfest urn model.…
The binary hard-sphere mixture is one of the simplest representations of a many-body system with competing time and length scales. This model is relevant to fundamentally understand both the structural and dynamical properties of materials,…
A molecular dynamics simulation of SPC/E water confined in a Silica pore is presented. The pore has been constructed to reproduce the average properties of a pore of Vycor glass. Due to the confinement and to the presence of a strong…
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…
We study the dynamics of a glassy model with infinite range interactions externally driven by an oscillatory force. We find a well-defined transition in the (Temperature-Amplitude-Frequency) phase diagram between (i) a `glassy' state…
For a model glass-former we demonstrate via computer simulations how macroscopic dynamic quantities can be inferred from a PEL analysis. The essential step is to consider whole superstructures of many PEL minima, called metabasins, rather…
Understanding glass formation by quenching remains a challenge in soft condensed matter physics. Recent numerical studies on steepest descent dynamics, which is one of the simplest models of quenching, revealed that quenched liquids undergo…
Kinetically constrained models (KCMs) are models of glass formers based on the concept of dynamic facilitation. This concept accounts for many of the characteristics of the glass transition. KCMs usually display a combination of simple…
We review recent developments in structural-dynamical phase transitions in trajectory space. An open question is how the dynamic facilitation theory of the glass transition may be reconciled with thermodynamic theories that posit a…
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…
Using Monte Carlo simulations we study the dynamics of three-dimensional Ising models with nearest-, next-nearest-, and four-spin (plaquette) interactions. During coarsening, such models develop growing energy barriers, which leads to very…
We propose a scenario for the glass transition based on the cooperative nature of nucleation processes and entropic effects. The main point is the relation between the off-equilibrium energy dissipation and nucleation processes in…
Kinetically constrained models (KCMs) have been used to study and understand the origin of glassy dynamics. Despite having trivial thermodynamic properties, their dynamics slows down dramatically at low temperatures while displaying…
We study experimentally the response of a dense sediment of Brownian particles to self-propulsion. We observe that the ergodic supercooled liquid relaxation is monotonically enhanced by activity. By contrast the nonergodic glass shows an…
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…
Melt supercooling leads to glass formation. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions are observed depending on thermal paths. Viscosity, density and surface tension thermal dependences measured at heating and subsequent cooling show hysteresis…
A central question concerning glass-formation has been what governs the kinetic arrest of the quenched liquid - cooling reduces the thermal energy which molecules need to surmount local potential barriers, while the accompanying volume…
We present simulation results addressing the phenomena of colloidal gelation induced by attractive interactions. The liquid-gas transition is prevented by the glass arrest at high enough attraction strength, resulting in a colloidal gel.…
We study thermally activated dynamics using functional renormalization within the field theory of randomly pinned elastic systems, a prototype for glasses. It appears through an essentially non-perturbative boundary layer in the running…
A fascinating feature of metallic glasses is their ability to explore different configurations under mechanical deformations. This effect is usually observed through macroscopic observables, while little is known on the consequence of the…