Related papers: Droplets and the configurational entropy crisis fo…
When a liquid is cooled below its melting temperature, if crystallization is avoided, it forms a glass. This phenomenon, called glass transition, is characterized by a marked increase of viscosity, about 14 orders of magnitude, in a narrow…
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…
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…
The configurational entropy is an indispensable tool to describe super-cooled liquids near the glass transition. Its calculation requires the enumeration of the basins in the potential energy landscape and when available, it reveals a…
Liquids relax extremely slowly upon approaching the glass state. One explanation is that an entropy crisis, due to the rarefaction of available states, makes it increasingly arduous to reach equilibrium in that regime. Validating this…
A model of low-temperature polar liquids is constructed that accounts for configurational heat capacity, entropy, and the effect of a strong electric field on the glass transition. The model is based on Pad{\'e}-truncated perturbation…
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…
The configurational entropy is one of the most important thermodynamic quantities characterizing supercooled liquids approaching the glass transition. Despite decades of experimental, theoretical, and computational investigation, a widely…
A molecular theory of the glass transition of network forming liquids is developed using a combination of self-consistent phonon and liquid state approaches. Both the dynamical transition and the entropy crisis characteristic of random…
We consider the problem of slow activation dynamics in glassy systems undergoing a random first order phase transition. Using an effective potential approach to supercooled liquids, we determine the spectrum of activation barriers for…
The configurational entropy is among the key observables to characterize experimentally the formation of a glass. Physically, it quantifies the multiplicity of metastable states in which an amorphous material can be found at a given…
We describe our perspective on the Structural Glass Transition (SGT) problem built on the premise that a viable theory must provide a consistent picture of the dynamics and statics, which are manifested by large increase in shear viscosity…
A unified treatment of structural relaxation in a deeply supercooled glassy liquid is developed which extends the existing mode coupling theory (MCT) by incorporating the effects of activated events by using the concepts from the random…
In this talk we discuss the possibility of constructing a fluctuation theory for structural glasses in the non-equilibrium aging state. After reviewing well known results in a toy model we discuss some of the key assumptions which support…
We give evidence of a clear structural signature of the glass transition, in terms of a static correlation length with the same dependence on the system size which is typical of critical phenomena. Our approach is to introduce an external,…
The dramatic slowdown of glass-forming liquids has been variously linked to increasing dynamic and static correlation lengths. Yet, empirical evidence is insufficient to decide among competing theories. The random first order theory (RFOT)…
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…
We use computer simulations to investigate the static properties of a simple glass-forming fluid in which the positions of a finite fraction of the particles has been frozen in. By probing the equilibrium distribution of the overlap between…
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…
We analyse numerically thermal fluctuations of the static overlap between equilibrium configurations in a glass-forming liquid approaching the glass transition. We find that the emergence of slow dynamics near the onset temperature…