Related papers: Transitions between metastable states in silica cl…
Using molecular dynamics computer simulations we investigate how in silica the glass transition and the properties of the resulting glass depend on the cooling rate with which the sample is cooled. By coupling the system to a heat bath with…
Interacting many-particle systems can self-organize into a rich variety of crystalline structures. While symmetry provides a powerful framework for predicting whether transitions between crystal states are continuous or discontinuous,…
This paper extends our earlier studies of free energy functions of density and crystalline order parameters for models of supercooled water, which allows us to examine the possibility of two distinct metastable liquid phases [J. Chem. Phys.…
We explore the glassy dynamics of soft colloids using microgels and charged particles interacting by steric and screened Coulomb interactions, respectively. In the supercooled regime, the structural relaxation time $\tau_\alpha$ of both…
We study energy landscape and dynamics of the three-dimensional Heisenberg Spin Glass model in the paramagnetic phase, i.e. for temperature $T$ larger than the critical temperature $T_\mathrm{c}$. The landscape is non-trivially related to…
Semiclassical transition probabilities characterize transfer of energy between "hard" and "soft" modes in various physical systems. We establish the boundary problem for singular euclidean solutions used to calculate such probabilities.…
The metastable states of a glass are counted by adding a weak pinning field which explicitly breaks the ergodicity. Their entropy, that is the logarithm of their number, is extensive in a range of temperatures $T_G < T < T_C$ only, where…
The phenomenon of Quantum Tunneling of Mesoscopic Spins is reviewed in the light of the behavior of the archetype of these systems: the molecular complex Mn12-ac. Most observations can be understood in the framework of the reduced Hilbert…
We analyze the energy barriers that allow escapes from a given local minimum in a mean-field model of glasses. We perform this study by using the Kac-Rice method and computing the typical number of critical points of the energy function at…
A recent hypothesis claims that the glass transition itself, though it is a very pronounced relaxation peak, is no separate relaxation process at all, but is just the breakdown of the shear modulus due to the weak elastic dipole interaction…
An alternative scenario for the glass transition based on the cooperative nature of nucleation processes and the role of entropic effects is presented. The new ingredient is to relate the dissipation during the relaxation process to the…
When liquids are cooled sufficiently rapidly below their melting temperature, they may bypass crystalization and, instead, enter a long-lived metastable supercooled state that has long been the focus of intense research. Although they…
We numerically elucidate the microscopic mechanisms controlling the relaxation dynamics of a three-dimensional lattice glass model that has static properties compatible with the approach to a random first-order transition. At low…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation of a supercooled simple monatomic glass-forming liquid. It is found that the onset of the supercooled regime results in formation of distinct domains of slow diffusion which are confined to the…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in 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…
Recent numerical developments in the study of glassy systems have shown that it is possible to give a purely geometric interpretation of the dynamic glass transition by considering the properties of unstable saddle points of the energy.…
We apply energy landscape methods to digital alchemy, defining a system in which the parameters of the potential are treated as degrees of freedom. Using geometrical optimisation, we locate minima and transition states on the landscape for…
This paper provides an overview of the research on the metastable behavior of the Ising model. We analyze the transition times from the set of metastable states to the set of the stable states by identifying the critical configurations that…
This is the first in a series of three papers in which we study a two-dimensional lattice gas consisting of two types of particles subject to Kawasaki dynamics at low temperature in a large finite box with an open boundary. Each pair of…