Related papers: When physics meets chemistry at dynamic glass tran…
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 glass state problem stems from the failure described in terms of one-electron theory or atoms (molecules) as independent particles. In 2005, de Gennes proposed that the way to explain the glass transition in simple terms was to…
Many properties of solids such as the glass state are commonly treated as nonequilibrium phenomena, which involve many conceptual difficulties. However, few studies have addressed the problem of understanding equilibrium itself. Equilibrium…
Glasses and gels are the two dynamically arrested, disordered states of matter. Despite their importance, their similarities and differences remain elusive, especially at high density. We identify dynamical and structural signatures which…
We consider the stationary state of a fluid comprised of inelastic hard spheres or disks under the influence of a random, momentum-conserving external force. Starting from the microscopic description of the dynamics, we derive a nonlinear…
The glassy state is known to undergo slow structural relaxation, where the system progressively explores lower free-energy minima which are either amorphous (ageing) or crystalline (devitrification). Recently, there is growing interest in…
A picture for thermodynamics of the glassy state is introduced. It assumes that one extra parameter, the effective temperature, is needed to describe the glassy state. This explains the classical paradoxes concerning the Ehrenfest relations…
Classical phase transitions, like solid-liquid-gas or order-disorder spin magnetic phases, are all driven by thermal energy fluctuations by varying the temperature. On the other hand, quantum phase transitions happen at absolute zero…
In the first part of the talk, I give a low-resolution overview of the current state of particle physics - the triumph of the Standard Model and its discontents. I review and re-endorse the remarkably direct and (to me) compelling argument…
The study of spin-glass dynamics, long considered the paradigmatic complex system, has reached important milestones. The availability of single crystals has allowed the experimental measurement of spin-glass coherence lengths of almost…
Glass is an under-cooled liquid that very slowly relaxes towards the equilibrium crystalline state. Its energy balance is ill understood, since it is widely believed that the glassy state cannot be described thermodynamically. However, the…
A system is glassy when the observation time is much smaller than the equilibration time. A unifying thermodynamic picture of the glassy state is presented. Slow configurational modes are in quasi-equilibrium at an effective temperature. It…
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
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…
Spin glasses occupy a unique place in condensed matter: they freeze collectively while remaining struc-turally disordered, and they exhibit slow, history-dependent dynamics that reflect an exceptionally rug-ged free-energy landscape. This…
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…
The possibility of observing a glass transition in water before crystallisation occurs has been debated vigorously but inconclusively over five decades [1,2]. For two decades a glass transition at 136K [2,3] was accepted but this transition…
Glass forming liquids exhibit a rich phenomenology upon confinement. This is often related to the effects arising from wall-fluid interactions. Here we focus on the interesting limit where the separation of the confining walls becomes of…
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…