Related papers: Glass transition in granular media
The glass transition plays a central role in nature as well as in industry, ranging from biological systems such as proteins and DNA to polymers and metals. Yet the fundamental understanding of the glass transition which is a prerequisite…
Theoretical challenges in understanding the nature of glass and the glass transition remain significant open questions in statistical and condensed matter physics. As a prototypical example of complex physical systems, glasses and the…
The glass transition, extensively studied in dense fluids, polymers, or colloids, corresponds to a dramatic evolution of equilibrium transport coefficients upon a modest change of control parameter, like temperature or pressure. A similar…
The phase diagram of a polydisperse hard sphere system is examined by numerical minimization of a discretized form of the Ramakrishnan-Yussouff free energy functional. Crystalline and glassy local minima of the free energy are located and…
We derive an extension of the mode coupling theory for the liquid-glass transition to a class of models of confined fluids, where the fluid particles evolve in a disordered array of interaction sites. We find that the corresponding…
We study an air-fluidized granular monolayer, composed of plastic spheres which roll on a metallic grid. The air current is adjusted so that the spheres never loose contact with the grid, so that the dynamics may be regarded as pseudo…
We study the mean-field phase diagram of glassy systems in a field pointing in the direction of a metastable state. We find competition among a ``magnetized'' and a ``disordered'' phase, that are separated by a coexistence line as in…
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be considered…
The analytical model of a glass-forming system is formulated within the formalism analogous to gauge theory constructions in quantum field theory. This work explores the scope of the proposed approach and investigates the equilibrium…
In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…
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…
Static granular packings are model hard-sphere glass formers. The nature of glass transition has remained a hotly debated issue. We review recent experimental progresses in using granular materials to study glass transitions. We focus on…
We report numerical results for the phase diagram in the density-disorder plane of a hard sphere system in the presence of quenched, random, pinning disorder. Local minima of a discretized version of the Ramakrishnan-Yussouff free energy…
We present a model of spheres moving in a high-dimensional compact space. We relate it to a mixed matrix model with a $O(N)$ invariant model plus a $P(N)$ invariant perturbation. We then study the low pressure regime by performing a…
In an effort to understand the glass transition, the dynamics of a non-randomly frustrated spin model has been analyzed. The phenomenology of the spin model is similar to that of a supercooled liquid undergoing the glass transition. The…
The glass transition can simply be viewed as the point at which the viscosity of a structurally disordered liquid reaches 10^{13} Poise [1]. This definition is operational but it sidesteps fundamental controversies about the glass: Is the…
Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the dynamic behavior of three-dimensional binary glasses prepared via an instantaneous quench across the glass transition. We found that with increasing strain…
The starting point of the present work is the observation of possible analogies, both at the phenomenological and at the methodological level, between the subcritical transition to turbulence and the glass transition. Having recalled the…
We introduce a three-dimensional lattice gas model to study the glass transition. In this model the interactions come from the excluded volume and particles have five arms with an asymmetrical shape, which results in geometric frustration…
Real structural glasses form through various out-of-equilibrium processes, including temperature quenches, rapid compression, shear, and aging. Each of these processes should be formally understandable within the recently formulated…