Related papers: Transitions between metastable states in silica cl…
The minimal cooling speed required to form a glass is obtained for a simple solvable energy landscape model. The model, made from a two-level system modified to include the topology of the energy landscape, is able to capture either a glass…
Dielectric measurements at very low temperature indicate that in a glass with the eutectic composition BaO-Al$_2$O$_3$-SiO$_2$ a phase transition occurs at 5.84 mK. Below that temperature small magnetic fields of the order of 10 $\mu$T…
Relations between the thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled liquids approaching a glass transition have been proposed over many years. The potential energy surface of model liquids has been increasingly studied since it provides a…
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…
By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we study the stationary points of the potential energy in a Lennard-Jones liquid, giving a purely geometric characterization of the energy landscape of the system. We find a linear relation…
Using the potential energy landscape formalism we show that, in the temperature range in which the dynamics of a glass forming system is thermally activated, there exists a unique set of "basis glass states" each of which is confined to a…
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…
We present a statistical method for complex energy landscape exploration which provides information on the metastable states--or valleys--actually explored by an unperturbed aging process following a quench. Energy fluctuations of record…
We numerically investigate the supercooled dynamics of two simple model liquids exploiting the partition of the multi-dimension configuration space in basins of attraction of the stationary points (inherent saddles) of the potential energy…
The thermodynamic and kinetic anomalies of supercooled liquids are analyzed from the perspective of energy landscapes. A mean field model, a generalized random energy model of liquids is developed, which exhibits a dynamical transition of…
We numerically study the interplay between heterogeneous dynamics and properties of negatively curved regions of the potential energy surface in a model glassy system. We find that the unstable modes of saddles and quasi-saddles undergo a…
We study the distribution of overlaps of glassy minima, taking proper care of residual symmetries of the system. Ensembles of locally stable, low lying glassy states are efficiently generated by rapid cooling from the liquid phase which has…
We study the statistical mechanics of a model glassy system based on a familiar and popular mathematical puzzle. Sudoku puzzles provide a very rare example of a class of frustrated systems with a unique groundstate without symmetry. Here,…
We describe how to characterize dynamical phase transitions in open quantum systems from a purely dynamical perspective, namely, through the statistical behavior of quantum jump trajectories. This approach goes beyond considering only…
A liquid can exist under conditions of thermodynamic stability or metastability within boundaries defined by the liquid-gas spinodal and the glass transition line. The relationship between these boundaries has been investigated previously…
We study the low-temperature behavior of a simple cluster-crystal forming system through simulation. The phase behavior is found to be hybrid between the Gaussian core and penetrable sphere models. The system additionally exhibits a series…
Over the last decade computer simulations have had an increasing role in shedding light on difficult statistical physical phenomena and in particular on the ubiquitous problem of the glass transition. Here in a wide variety of materials the…
We reformulate the interpretation of the mean-field glass transition scenario for finite dimensional systems, proposed by Wolynes and collaborators. This allows us to establish clearly a temperature dependent length xi* above which the…
Computer simulations of a model glass-forming system are presented, which are particularly sensitive to the correlation between the dynamics and the topography of the potential energy landscape. This analysis clearly reveals that in the…
Energy landscapes are high-dimensional surfaces representing the dependence of system energy on variable configurations, which determine crucially the system's emergent behavior but are difficult to be analyzed due to their high-dimensional…