Related papers: The Intrinsic Quantum Excitations of Low Temperatu…
The quantum excitations in glasses have long presented a set of puzzles for condensed matter physicists. A common view is that they are largely disordered analogs of elementary excitations in crystals, supplemented by two level systems…
We argue that the intrinsic glassy degrees of freedom in amorphous solids giving rise to the thermal conductivity plateau and the ``boson peak'' in the heat capacity at moderately low temperatures are directly connected to those motions…
A microscopically motivated theory of glassy dynamics based on an underlying random first order transition is developed to explain the magnitude of free energy barriers for glassy relaxation. A variety of empirical correlations embodied in…
Random first order transition theory is used to determine the role of attractive and repulsive interactions in the dynamics of supercooled liquids. Self-consistent phonon theory, an approximate mean field treatment consistent with random…
Glasses display a wide array of nonlinear acoustic phenomena at temperatures $T\lesssim 1$ K. This behavior has traditionally been explained by an ensemble of weakly-coupled, two-level tunneling states, a theory that is also used to…
Besides the dynamical slowing down signaled by an enormous increase of the viscosity approaching the glass transition, structural glasses show interesting anomalous thermodynamic features at low temperatures that hint at peculiar deviations…
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…
Thermodynamics and kinetics are thought to be linked in glass transitions. The quantitative predictions of -relaxation activation barriers provided by the theory of glasses based on random first order transitions are compared with…
We present a novel view of the standard model of tunneling two level systems (TLS) to explain the puzzling universal value of a quantity, $C\sim 3\times 10^{-4}$, that characterizes phonon scattering in glasses below 1 K as reflected in…
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…
We describe the interaction stimulated relaxation in the ensemble of two-level systems, responsible for low temperature kinetics and thermodynamics properties of amorphous solids. This relaxation gets significant at sufficiently low…
We report on a refined version of our spin-glass type approach to the low-temperature physics of structural glasses. Its key idea is based on a Born von Karman expansion of the interaction potential about a set of reference positions in…
We propose that glass-forming liquids are intrinsically under the influences of both fluctuating interactions and random fields well-known in the field of spin systems. This is due to the frustration between the isotropic and anisotropic…
We consider the effect of droplet excitations in the random first order transition theory of glasses on the configurational entropy. The contribution of these excitations is estimated both at and above the ideal glass transition…
At low temperatures, glasses exhibit distinctive properties compared to crystalline solids. A notable example is the phonon echo, a phenomenon that motivated the two-level-system (TLS) model. This model has successfully explained many…
Strong changes in bulk properties, such as modulus and viscosity, are observed near the glass transition temperature, T_{g}, of amorphous materials. For more than a century, intense efforts have been made to define a microscopic origin for…
We review a model--based rather than phenomenological approach to low--temperature anomalies in glasses. Specifically, we present a solvable model inspired by spin--glass theory that exhibits both, a glassy low--temperature phase, and a…
The glass transition temperature and its connection to statistical properties of confined and free-standing polymer films of varying thickness containing unentangled to highly entangled bead-spring chains are studied by molecular dynamics…
Low temperature properties of glasses are derived within a generalized tunneling model, considering the motion of charged particles on a closed path in a double-well potential. The presence of a magnetic induction field B violates the time…
We review the Random First Order Transition Theory of the glass transition, emphasizing the experimental tests of the theory. Many distinct phenomena are quantitatively predicted or explained by the theory, both above and below the glass…