Related papers: Front propagation in ultrastable glasses is dynami…
This paper reviews recent Monte Carlo simulation studies of the glassy behavior in thin polymer films. The simulations employ a version of the bond-fluctuation lattice model, in which the glass transition is driven by the competition…
The study of the properties of glass-forming liquids is difficult for many reasons. Analytic solutions of mean field models are usually available only for systems embedded in a space with an unphysically high number of spatial dimensions;…
The presence of dynamical heterogeneities, i.e. nanometer-scale regions containing molecules rearranging cooperatively at very different rates compared to the bulk, is increasingly being recognized as crucial in our understanding of the…
The phase diagram of soft spheres with size dispersion has been studied by means of an optimized Monte Carlo algorithm which allows to equilibrate below the kinetic glass transition for all sizes distribution. The system ubiquitously…
A recent breakthrough in glass science has been the synthesis of ultrastable glasses via physical vapor deposition techniques. These samples display enhanced thermodynamic, kinetic and mechanical stability, with important implications for…
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…
Diverse material classes exhibit practically identical behavior when made viscous upon cooling toward the glass transition, suggesting a common theoretical basis. The first-principles scaling laws that have been proposed to describe the…
Over times shorter than that required for relaxation of enthalpy, a liquid can exhibit striking heterogeneities. The picture of these heterogeneities is complex with transient patches of rigidity, irregular yet persistent, intersected by…
The fragile-to-strong glass transition is a fascinating phenomenon that still presents many theoretical and experimental challenges. A major one is how to tune the fragility of a glass-forming liquid. Here, we study a two-dimensional (2D)…
Molecular para-hydrogen has been proposed theoretically as a possible candidate for superfluidity, but the eventual superfluid transition is hindered by its crystallization. In this work, we study a metastable non crystalline phase of bulk…
Supercooled liquids display dynamics that are inherently heterogeneous in space. This essentially means that at temperatures below the melting point, particle dynamics in certain regions of the liquid can be orders of magnitude faster than…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the slow dynamics of supercooled liquids confined in a random matrix of immobile obstacles. We study the dynamical crossover from glass-like to Lorentz-gas-like behavior in terms of the density…
Recent experiments and computer simulations show that supercooled liquids around the glass transition temperature are "dynamically heterogeneous" [1]. Such heterogeneity is expected from the random first order transition theory of the glass…
The glass transition refers to the non-equilibrium process by which an equilibrium liquid is transformed to a non-equilibrium disordered solid, or vice versa. Associated response functions, such as heat capacities, are markedly different on…
Confining glassy polymer into films can substantially modify their local and film-averaged properties. We present a lattice model of film geometry with void-mediated facilitation behaviors but free from any elasticity effect. We analyze the…
Molecular dynamics simulations of interacting soft disks confined in a heterogeneous quenched matrix of soft obstacles show dynamics which is fundamentally different from that of hard disks. The interactions between the disks can enhance…
Glass-forming liquids display strong fluctuations -- dynamical heterogeneities -- near their glass transition. By numerically simulating a binary Weeks-Chandler-Andersen liquid and varying both temperature and timescale, we investigate the…
In this paper the phenomenon of dynamic heterogeneity in supercooled liquid systems is considered in terms of the recently proposed gauge theory of glass transition. The physical interpretation of the dynamic scaling is considered. It is…
A non-equilibrium theory of isothermal and diffusionless evolution of incoherent interfaces within a plastically deforming solid is developed. The irreversible dynamics of the interface are driven by its normal motion, incoherency (slip and…
Liquids near the glass transition exhibit dynamical heterogeneity, i.e. local relaxation rates fluctuate strongly over space and time. Here we introduce a simple continuum model that allows for quantitative predictions for the correlators…