Related papers: Direct visualization of aging in colloidal glasses
The replica theory of glasses predicts that in the infinite dimensional mean field limit there exist two distinct glassy phases of matter: stable glass and marginal glass. We have developed a technique to experimentally probe these phases…
We show that the aging of the mechanical relaxation of a gelatin gel exhibits the same scaling phenomenology as polymer and colloidal glasses. Besides, gelatin is known to exhibit logarithmic structural aging (stiffening). We find that…
Despite their technological relevance, a full microscopic understanding of glasses is still lacking. This applies even more to their surfaces whose properties largely differ from that of the bulk material. Here, we experimentally…
Colloids are suspensions of small solid particles in a liquid, and exhibit glassy behavior when the particle concentration is high. In these samples, the particles are roughly analogous to individual molecules in a traditional glass. This…
We explore the compaction dynamics of a granular pile after a hard quench from a liquid into the glassy regime. First, we establish that the otherwise athermal granular pile during tapping exhibits annealing behavior comparable to glassy…
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…
The dynamics of dislocations is reported to exhibit glassy properties. We study numerically various versions of 2d edge dislocation systems in the absence of externally applied stress. Two types of glassy behavior are identified: (i)…
We use light microscopy to investigate the aging dynamics of a glass made of closely packed soft spheres, following a rapid transition from a fluid to a solid-like state. By measuring time-resolved, coarse-grained displacements fields, we…
The eye lens is the most characteristic example of mammalian tissues exhibiting complex colloidal behaviour. In this paper we briefly describe how dynamics in colloidal suspensions can help addressing selected aspects of lens cataract which…
We use X-Ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy to investigate the structural relaxation process in a metallic glass on the atomic length scale. We report evidence for a dynamical crossover between the supercooled liquid phase and the…
We report results of molecular dynamics simulations of a binary Lennard-Jones system at zero pressure in the undercooled liquid and glassy states. We first follow the evolution of diffusivity and dynamic heterogeneity with temperature and…
Many colloidal systems display very non-Newtonian and solid-like behaviour when concentrated, a striking feature being the apparition of a yield stress. After recalling some basics about the interactions between colloidal particles, I…
We report measurements of the frequency-dependent shear moduli of aging colloidal systems that evolve from a purely low-viscosity liquid to a predominantly elastic glass or gel. Using microrheology, we measure the local complex shear…
Glasses are out-of-equilibrium systems aging under the crystallization threat. During ordinary glass formation, the atomic diffusion slows down rendering its experimental investigation impractically long, to the extent that a timescale…
Colloidal suspensions are simple model systems for the study of phase transitions. Video microscopy is capable of directly imaging the structure and dynamics of colloidal suspensions in different phases. Recent results related to…
The adsorption dynamics of a colloidal particle at a fluid interface is studied theoretically and numerically, documenting distinctly different relaxation regimes. The adsorption of a perfectly smooth particle is characterized by a fast…
We study the effect of shear on the aging dynamics of a colloidal suspension of synthetic clay particles. We find that a shear of amplitude $\gamma$ reduces the relaxation time measured just after the cessation of shear by a factor…
Within the framework of mode-coupling theory, we present a simple model for describing dense assemblies of active (self-propelled) spherical colloidal particles. For isotropic suspensions, we demonstrate that the glass transition is shifted…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
We study by light microscopy a soft glass consisting of a compact arrangement of polydisperse elastic spheres. We show that its slow and non-stationary dynamics results from the unavoidable small fluctuations of temperature, which induce…